Rhetorical strategies persuasion essay

by | Aug 3, 2020 | Communication

To achieve professional success in any field, we must be able to communicate persuasively. As you learned in writing your rhetorical analysis essay, advertisers use ethos, pathos, and logos to convince customers to buy their products. Similarly, you may use ethos, pathos, and logos in a variety of workplace situations to reach your goals. Consider the following scenarios:

You’ve just completed a successful project for your organization that will result in increased revenues and reduced costs. You believe you deserve a reward. How will you convince your boss?
You have a great idea to start a new non-profit or business in your community, but you need an initial investment to turn your plans into reality. How will you persuade investors to believe in you?
The park across the street from your company’s office is covered in unsightly litter. If your company could help clean it up, it would improve the park’s appearance and boost the image of your organization in the community. How would you convince your colleagues to participate in the cleanup effort?
For this assignment, you will apply your understanding of ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade an educated, discerning audience, in the form of an essay written in APA format. Here are a few possible topics for your essay:

Persuade your boss to give you a raise and/or promotion at work.
Pretend that you are running for a locally elected office in your community. Explain why voters should choose you.
Make a persuasive pitch for implementing a new money-saving process, offering a new product or service, or improving employee morale at your workplace.
You have a great idea for a new business, or for a non-profit organization in your community. Write an extended pitch to attract investors. (See “Microgenre: The Pitch,” pp. 244-246 for an example).
Convince your supervisor to allow all employees to spend one afternoon of paid time each month volunteering at a local charity.

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Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.


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God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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