The Crucible Rhetorical Analysis Essay

During this long chunk of non-dialogue the Narrator, seemingly Arthur Miller, goes into great depth to describe what is happening in America at the time of this play and also establishes his beliefs and persuades us to believe what he tells us with rhetoric. He frames America in a light of strict law and where most people are almost authoritarian and view every law made as moral rights and wrong. He frames America in this time where political opposition is unheard of and has strict consequences. He shows us that religion is almost law in this point of America and all who do not follow every rule to its finest are punished severely. A way he does this is by flat out saying it but in rhetorical terms he uses a very large analogy of American law to Communist beliefs. Their government is
very strict and conservative so when he compares America at the time with this form of government he is showing just how strict our laws at the time were and how significant they were to the people. Throughout this sort of monologue away from the plot of the play Miller uses many rhetorical devices to make us believe the facts he throws at us.
He tries to boost his practical wisdom by showing us that he knows his craft. He does this in one of the main three ways that Heinricks showed us in TYFA, showing off experience. He does this by showing us that he got his beliefs and justifying them from how he was taught by a Lutheran professor in University. He was there, he lived it, and learned from it so that builds the idea that his ideas about it should be true, this is how he builds our belief in his craft. This then contributes to building his practical wisdom and as a whole his credibility is boosted making his Ethos look very solid. He also establishes disinterest in his conclusions by never taking a side. He remains neutral throughout this sort of monologue and instead gives us facts and logic that applies our logos then using deductive and inductive reasoning to come to conclusions about it. This disinterest he tries to establish applies to our Ethos. He also uses decorum in the way he relates his ideas about religion and how Salem is being run to Communism in other
countries. This is decorum in the way that he knows that Communism is an issue at the time of writing this play so he uses this as a tool in his analogy so that the audience identifies with the ideas he compares it to. Overall, Miller uses the three forms of persuasion and a very big comparison of America to Communism to get us to believe what he says and propel his message of lawlike religion and government that doesn’t distinguish very much between the two.