The autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

Chelsey Wilkins


Thomas Jefferson is one of our founding fathers. In his passage he appealed to a couple parts of the rhetoric triangle. He chose to write in first person which showed to me these were his personal feeling s towards the coming of their freedom. Thomas Jefferson is one of the main reasons why we don’t live in an anachary society, so for that reason I respect him but let’s look deeper.

Thomas Jefferson appealed to very emotional diction in his passage. The way he expressed some of his feeling toward the leaders of the other colonies gave me the idea that he thought he was above them maybe even better than them as a person. In the Declaration of Independence Jefferson mentioned slavery multiple times as in those who owned slaves were wrong and he was there to be superman and save the day. Yet ironically he, himself was a slave owner which made me think like hey, what kind of founding father is he?

The Declaration of Independence was a main participant in the act of appealing to pathos. Between the original declaration of independence and the revised one it really showed the feelings to the anarchy that the other colonies faced. Mostly anything having to deal with the English King was revised or debated which stood out to me because there has to be a strong amount of hatred not to want to be loyal to your ruler any more. The original declaration had words such as suffered or unremitting which came out stronger and bolder just jumping straight to the point yet the revised one was most likely trying to make their true feelings toward the king sound more respectful.

I also noticed that around the beginning of Jefferson’s autobiography he appealed to figurative language. “In the course of these debates, the colonies New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina and Maryland were not yet matured from falling from a parent stem.” This quote was in the form of a metaphor comparing the maturity of the colonies to the process of a child growing up detaching from its parents. Once again this comment jumped out to me giving me the idea that maybe Jefferson was just a little too much into himself.

To conclude, Thomas Jefferson is one of our founding fathers. He attributed to the freedom we enjoy today. In his autobiography he appealed to three parts of the rhetoric triangle which were pathos, diction, and figurative language. The question of what kind of corrupt founding father is he still roams my mind.