Florance Kelley Ap Language Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetorical Analysis Essay Florence Kelly, a prominent reformer in the United States, powerfully addresses her audience of educated white women by highlighting the terrible conditions that children endure. By appealing to pathos and using vivid imagery, she conveys the urgent need to reform harsh child labor laws, urging her listeners to recognize the necessity for change. Florance Kelley employs pathos to evoke guilt in the audience, to encourage her audience to take a stance against child labor. She vividly describes the plight of children forced into labor, describing heartwrenching scenarios young children are forced into against their will. She draws parallels between the children’s scenarios and her audience by contrasting both lifestyles.
She uses phrases like “the deafening noise” to further emphasize the rigorous environment kids are forced to work in. In her speech, Kelley also bewildered her audience by saying “No one in this room tonight can feel free from such participation” (Kelley 65). She wants her audience to recognize that they are a contributing factor to the issue of child labor, whether subconsciously or not. Kelley aims to make her audience understand that if they remain passive and ignore the harsh conditions children face, child labor will persist, and no positive outcome will result from it. In addition to her audience's sense of guilt, Kelley employs striking imagery to enable her readers and audience to picture the harsh conditions children endure under child labor laws. By describing vivid scenarios to her audience, Kelley evokes guilt from the audience to allow them to be more aware of the cruel environment children are working in. In her speech, Kelley talks about the minors who “make our shoes in the shoe factories; they knit our stockings, our knitted underwear in the knitting factories. They spin and weave our cotton underwear in cotton mills” (Kelley