Write the rhetorical analysis with the clock running

CHAPTER 29

Write the rhetorical analysis with the clock running

Use the opening minutes to decide what the writer is trying to accomplish and how the passage moves toward it. Once you have a small number of choices you can explain with evidence, start writing. Extra labels do not compensate for thin commentary.

A first read that produces a plan

The drill below is intentionally shorter than an official rhetorical-analysis passage. Use it to practice the same reading and planning decisions under a tighter format. Read for situation, identify an analytical endpoint, and track how the passage moves before drafting. For this shortened drill, spend no more than five minutes reading and planning before you begin drafting.

Passage FOR

THE TIMED ESSAY

Prompt: Read the following passage carefully. Then write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Susan B. Anthony makes to develop her argument.

Friends and Fellow-citizens: I stand before you to-night, under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but instead simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet, we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.

And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people, women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government, the ballot.

Susan B. Anthony, “Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?” 1873, delivered during the months before her June trial for illegal voting

MODEL RESPONSE

This response was drafted under timed conditions using the passage above. Read it once fully before turning to the scoring explanation that follows.

Anthony transforms a legal defense into a constitutional argument by reworking the government's own founding language against the government that has charged her, converting an individual indictment into an indictment of the law itself.

The passage opens at the scale of the legal charge: Anthony is “under indictment” for voting. That choice frames the dispute as a question of law before the argument widens to constitutional principle. Her verb “prove” keeps the opening in a legal register, so the later constitutional quotation grows out of the same framework rather than appearing as a separate appeal.

That expansion happens immediately in the second paragraph, where Anthony quotes the Constitution's preamble directly rather than paraphrasing it. Quoting the government's own founding text, rather than summarizing its content, anchors her interpretation in a text that carries authority within the legal dispute; she is reading their document back to them. The repeated, escalating negation that follows, “not we, the white male citizens; nor yet, we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people,” performs the constitutional interpretation itself as a rhetorical structure, ruling out narrower readings one at a time before asserting the inclusive one, so that by the time she reaches “the whole people,” the audience has already watched the alternatives fail.

The final paragraph converts this interpretive claim into a direct moral charge. The word “mockery” does more work here than a milder synonym would: it does not merely say that women lack liberty, but that the nation's continued talk of liberty in their presence has become a kind of insult, a performance of a value the nation refuses to actually extend. Pairing this accusation with the concrete mechanism she names, “the ballot”, keeps the passage's climax tethered to the same specific, legal register established in the opening, rather than drifting into abstraction. The passage's movement, from modest legal defendant to constitutional interpreter to moral accuser, is what allows this final word to land as the culmination of an argument rather than an isolated outburst.

Model response to the compressed instructional rhetorical-analysis passage

AUTHOR RUBRIC APPLICATION: 6/6

This is an instructional scoring judgment using the current College Board rubric, not an official College Board score.

Thesis: 1/1. The thesis gives a specific interpretation: Anthony turns a personal legal defense into a constitutional argument by using the government's own language against the charge.

Evidence and commentary: 4/4. The response uses small, precise choices such as “under indictment,” “to prove,” the escalating negation, and “mockery,” then explains what each choice accomplishes in the passage. The commentary keeps returning to the same interpretation instead of listing devices.

Sophistication: 1/1. The response explains the significance of Anthony's movement from individual charge to constitutional interpretation to moral accusation within the rhetorical situation; the choices are treated as connected parts of one argument rather than isolated devices.

REVISION DEMONSTRATION

Even a response that scores well can be improved. Below is a version of the third paragraph's final sentence with a realistic weakness, followed by one targeted revision.

Before

This repeated structure is a good example of anaphora and really makes the passage more persuasive and powerful for the reader.

After

The repeated, escalating negation that follows, “not we, the white male citizens; nor yet, we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people,” performs the constitutional interpretation itself as a rhetorical structure, ruling out narrower readings one at a time before asserting the inclusive one.

The weaker version names a device, “anaphora”, and then reaches immediately for vague effect words, “persuasive and powerful”, without explaining what the repetition specifically accomplishes in this passage. This is exactly the label-then-vague-effect pattern Chapter 27 warns against: the sentence could be attached to nearly any passage using repetition. The revision replaces the label and vague effect with a specific account of what the structure does, enacting the interpretive move Anthony is making rather than just naming that a device is present, which is the difference between commentary that could belong to any passage and commentary that belongs only to this one.