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Essay On Allusion In Patrick Henry

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Patrick Henry, an eloquent speaker during the independence movement, gives his speech in the Virginia Convention in order to inspire revolution and to state that the colonies’ pleas to their mother country Britain has been unsuccessful in getting a beneficial response. The allusions and parallelism implemented throughout the passage help rile up the colonists to fight. Allusions are employed by Henry to display the need to split from the British government. First, Henry refers to the poem Odyssey by Homer in order to compare Britain to the enticing “sirens” that lure people to them by singing mesmerizing “songs” with the devious intention of “transform[ing these people] into beasts” (Henry 14). The colonists are a comparison to the people who fall into the sirens’ trap. With this allusion, Henry is expressing that the British government is deceiving the colonists just like the sirens. When the people come to the sirens, the sirens degrade these humans into the form of beasts, specifically swine. This conversion is a metaphor of how Britain attracts the colonists with false pretense such as protection, but ultimately, it takes away the colonists’ natural human rights, leading them to have as much rights as swine. This comparison to an unclean animal enrages the colonists and gives them a reason to fight for their liberty. Another example of an allusion in the oration is the reference to Judas in The Bible. There are numerous biblical

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