Similarities and Differences in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and Richard Henry’s Speech to the Second Virginia Convention

Similarities and Differences in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and Richard Henry’s Speech to the Second Virginia Convention There are many similarities and differences in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” and Richard Henry’s Speech to the Second Virginia Convention. Both of these famous speeches were made by colonists to persuade the people of the colonies to dissolve all connections with Great Britain and fight for their own freedom. Patrick Henry made his speech before the Declaration of Independence to persuade the colonists to start making a plan to get away from Great Britain and to make the colonists “riled up”. Thomas Pine wrote “Common Sense” to boost the colonists’ morale because they faced many hardships while fighting for independence from Great Britain and felt like giving up on the cause. Both of these famous speeches have many things in common. They both contain strong, confident, and persuading diction and tones. These two literary works are among the most famous Colonial America works. In Richard Henry’s speech, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” is one of the most famous quotes in all of American history. “Common Sense” is most well known for, “But there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.” Both of these speeches are persuade the colonists to completely break away from Great Britain. Both of these speeches were to boost morale and patriotism. Some say that these two speeches are, perhaps, the most important literary works in American history in terms of what they started. These two speeches are most of the reason that we are now the United States of American and not still Great Britain’s colonies. Patrick Henry’s Speech to the Second Virginia Convention had many rhetorical devices such as rhetorical questions, allusions, and metaphors. Patrick Henry used rhetorical questions very precisely to make the listeners think for themselves so the message would sink in further. They made the members of