Henry Wilfred Owen Rhetorical Analysis

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In the passage, Henry David Thoreau uses the literary device of a metaphor to contrast the morning’s dawn with the awakening of the reader’s intrinsic knowledge. To drive his metaphor, Thoreau uses vivid language, which paints an ideal scene for the reader. The sentence, “Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night,” characterizes a persistently hazy state of being from which an individual rouses to find clarity. By juxtaposing the natural and spiritual, Thoreau alludes to a transcendental ideology rooted in self-enlightenment. The phrase, “Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius,”

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