Literary Analysis Of Christopher Hitchens's The Lovely Stones
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Desiring a world that would do the right thing within the “right” structure, Christopher Hitchens, author of "The Lovely Stones", adamantly strives to convince his audience that the treasured Greek carvings, which were sawed and carted away from ancient temples of Parthenon, need to be taken back to its ancestral location in Athens. Accordingly, with the aforesaid in mind, Hitchens uses example, imagery and rhetorical question to persuade his readers.
Example can be a potent persuasive device. To this end, Hitchens uses the sale, in London, of the original Parthenon sculptures to evidently sustain his call for their return to Greece. Clearly, he draws attention to an occasion where these priceless Greek carvings, carted away by Lord Elgin from its ancestral location at Athens, were “sold well below cost … to the British government in 1816 for $2.2 million in today 's currency“. Furthermore, for Elgin to sell these treasures, just “to pay off ... many debts“, is absurd. With the example, Hitchens shows that the sale of these treasured sculptures was only possible because Lord Elgin, who was Britain 's ambassador to Greece in the 19th Century, had sawed and taken them with him to England. Besides, by emphasizing the ridiculous low cost Elgin sold these beautiful carvings, Hitchens manifestly supports his claims to his readers. He explicitly showed that it is only when the present owners return these sculptures to their original locations in the Acropolis of Athens that