Virgil Aeneid Rhetoric - Essay Example

Rhetoric questions are used to arouse concern and attract attention. That’s what the speaker wanted to do. He wanted to attract the attention of the audience to the problem. He does not assert but inquires and in this inquiry, the listeners differentiate the message – the gift from the Danaans is a ruse, the one not to be trusted.
In the following arguments, we observe climatic argumentation: “Achaeans must be hiding in this timber, or it was built to butt against our walls, peer over them into our houses, pelt the city from the sky. Some crookedness is in this thing. I have no faith in the horse! Whatever it is, even when Greeks bring gifts I fear them, gifts and all”.
The speaker uses parallel constructions which are arranged in the enumeration pattern (‘to butt against our walls’, “peer over them into our houses”, “pelt the city from the sky”) which makes the sentence very dynamic and powerful. The next sentences are short and it adds to the dynamism created by the previous sentence.
The rhetoric question and the following argumentation stand in a ‘question-answer’ relation, though it’s not so obvious as rhetoric questions do not require answers. We conclude that the rhetoric technique used is hypophora. The author catches the attention of the listeners with powerful rhetorical questions and proceeds with reasoning which is the indirect answer to the questions. The answer is detailed and lengthy.

The attractiveness of the hypophora is in its ability to catch the attention of the listener. The orator asks questions that listeners are curious about but feels difficulty in clear articulation of the answers. The listeners want the orator to formulate the answer to the question of interest.
What the author achieves with the use of the hypophora is catching listeners’ attention at once and making the listeners reason along with the reasoning of the author. The use of this rhetorical device makes the listeners think and make conclusions along with the author.
A hypophora is a useful tool in a situation when it’s important to persuade people of the rightness of the author’s opinion but when the majority stands on the opposite. The speaker does not impose his view rather he brings the listeners to a certain conclusion and makes them accept this conclusion. At the same time, the listeners are made to believe that’s their stream of thoughts that led them to such a conclusion.