Rhetorical Analysis Of Walden By Henry David Thoreau

This rhetorical question is found in the second paragraph of Thoreau's first part to his essay. In this paragraph Thoreau advocates against the American government and lists multiple of its faults for his readers, in order to push his point that the government does not do the job it is assigned to perform. Furthermore, Thoreau also tries to get the reader to come to the conclusion that the country would be better without the government in place. Thoreau places this rhetorical question in the beginning of the paragraph in order to demean the government prior to making his central argument. He essentially takes a swat at the entire government saying that it is nothing but a tradition that is losing its honor. This realization that the whole American
government can be taken down in one statement, whether the reader agrees with the statement or not, shakes the reader and causes them to take Thoreau’s following argument more seriously than they otherwise might have.