All 12 Uses of
rhetoric
in
Look Homeward, Angel
- He never found it, and he reeled down across the continent into the Reconstruction South—a strange wild form of six feet four with cold uneasy eyes, a great blade of nose, and a rolling tide of rhetoric, a preposterous and comic invective, as formalized as classical epithet, which he used seriously, but with a faint uneasy grin around the corners of his thin wailing mouth.†
Chpt 1rhetoric = the use of (or study of using) words to make a point
- His voice was heard in the land once more, there were purple flashes of the old rhetoric, the ghost of the old eagerness.†
Chpt 1
- Eliza wept or was silent to his curse, nagged briefly in retort to his rhetoric, gave like a punched pillow to his lunging drive—and slowly, implacably had her way.†
Chpt 1
- And he screamed a sermon of profanity and woven invective:— "Little did I reck," he began, getting at once into the swing of preposterous rhetoric which he used half furiously, half comically, "little did I reck the day I first saw her eighteen bitter years ago, when she came wriggling around the corner at me like a snake on her belly—[a stock epithet which from repetition was now heartbalm to him]—little did I reck that—that—that it would come to this," he finished lamely.†
Chpt 1
- Or again, Gant would read to him with sonorous and florid rhetoric passages from Shakespeare, among which he heard most often Marc Antony's funeral oration, Hamlet's soliloquy, the banquet scene in Macbeth, and the scene between Desdemona and Othello before he strangles her.†
Chpt 1
- His turbulent and undisciplined rhetoric had acquired, by the regular convention of its usage, something of the movement and directness of classical epithet: his similes were preposterous, created really in a spirit of vulgar mirth, and the great comic intelligence that was in the family—down to the youngest—was shaken daily by it.†
Chpt 1
- Meanwhile, as he laid big gleaming lumps of coal upon the wood, he muttered to himself, his mind ordering in a mounting sequence, with balanced and climactic periods, his carefully punctuated rhetoric.†
Chpt 1
- At this moment Gant strode in out of the dusk, carrying a mottled package of pork chops, and muttering rhetorically to himself.†
Chpt 2 *rhetorically = in a manner that uses words to make a point
- "You m-m-m-miserable d-d-degenerate," he stuttered, unconsciously falling into the swing of the Gantian rhetoric.†
Chpt 2rhetoric = the use of (or study of using) words to make a point
- The years of his glory washed back to him upon the rolling tides of rhetoric—the great lost days of the first crusade when the money barons trembled beneath the shadow of the Cross of Gold, and Bryan!†
Chpt 2
- Why—" he continued rhetorically.†
Chpt 3rhetorically = in a manner that uses words to make a point
- He was lost and sorrowful, but sometimes, with a flash of his old rhetoric, he spoke of his grief and the death of his son.†
Chpt 3rhetoric = the use of (or study of using) words to make a point
Definition:
the use of (or study of using) words to make a point -- typically implying skillful use
Rhetoric is used with many connotations. "Effective rhetoric" has a positive connotation, If someone says something is "just rhetoric," they're implying that the words may make a good surface impression, but they are lacking in substance.