Max Barnett
Mr. Wilkinson
Grammar and Comp H2
25 February 2015
Syntactical Seduction It is easy to make anybody do anything! Okay, maybe it isn’t, but if the art of persuasive speech is mastered, convincing others of certain things will become much easier. Persuasion is being able to effectively convince a person or a group of people to act, think or feel a different way. This skill is integral to lawyers, as they are constantly attempting to convince people of one thing or another, like Atticus, the lawyer defending a Tom Robinson who was accused of rape in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. To Atticus, this skill is his most valuable tool. Using Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, Atticus persuades a jury who’s minds are set against his client by being showing them respect and acting like a friend, getting the jury to feel that Tom is innocent and Mayella is guilty, and by presenting them irrefutable evidence and logic that Tom is innocent and Mayella is guilty.
Using ethos, Atticus was able to connect with the jury on a personal level by being respectful and making himself comfortable in their presence. Throughout Atticus’s speeches, the jurymen were “attentive: their heads were up, and they followed Atticus’s route with what seemed to be appreciation” (Lee, 270). This was because Atticus “wasn’t a thunderer” (Lee, 270). He didn’t address the jurymen as if they were deaf children with the knowledge of an infant, he talked to them as what they were—men. And these men appreciated this very much, repaying them with their attention. This transaction creates a sort of camaraderie, or a friendship that makes the men like Atticus. Atticus also needed to win these men’s trust, and did so by making himself comfortable in their presence. He addressed the jury with When addressing the jury, Atticus “did something that he didn’t normally do” (Lee, 270); “he unbuttoned his vest, unbuttoned his collar, loosened his tie, and took off his coat” (Lee, 271). He then started talking to these people “as if they were folks on the post office corner” (Lee, 271). By making himself comfortable in the presence of the jury, Atticus acted like a friend in the presence of other friends. And friends have to have a certain level of trust in each other to remove the more formal attire and make themselves comfortable. By doing this, Atticus made himself more of an open friend rather than a secretive lawman. Atticus successfully connected on a personal level, but humans are emotional creatures, and that was an area that Atticus excelled in getting the jury to feel what he needed them to feel. Employing pathos, Atticus, able to establish an emotional connection, got the jury to feel what he wanted them to feel, which is Tom Robinson’s innocence and Mayela Ewell’s guilt. Atticus talks about how Tom is a “quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to ‘feel sorry’ for a white woman” (Lee, 273). Atticus starts by pointing out the fact that Tom was a stand-up, respectable man who has never done anything of this nature before. He even felt sorry for a person who was racially above him and had infinitely more privileges than him. This man was even crippled, but he still felt bad for this white woman. But the blame, anger, and guilt had to fall on someone else, which happened to Mayella Ewell, and justly so. “[Atticus couldn’t] pity her” (Lee, 272). “She tempted a Negro” (Lee 272) while knowing “full well the enormity of her offense” (Lee 272). At this time, tempting a black man was an abhorring crime, possibly comparable to being a prostitute nowadays. And it was not as if it was an ignorant whim that happened in an instant; she had obviously planned out what she was going to do and knew what she was doing. And on top of that, this man was a humble, naïve, kind, and crippled man with a family that would never hurt a fly. Atticus’s passionate speech instilled in the jurymen the innocence of Tom and the guilt of Mayella, but in order to “put
