Collections Grade 12 Guiding Questions
Collection 3
“from The Crisis” by Thomas Paine
Read the essay from “The Crisis” by Thomas Paine. Then, reread the lines indicated
with each question below. Answer each question, citing text evidence.
1. Lines 10–15: How and why does Paine refer to God in line 15?
2. Lines 26–36: In which lines does Paine use an emotional analogy? Why is it so
powerful?
3. Lines 37–47: What words and reasoning does Paine use in his ethical appeal? What
does he imply?
4. Lines 77–86: What examples of parallel structure are in lines 81–84? Which
grammatical elements are repeated? What previous passage do these lines echo,
and why does Paine return to the ideas here?
5. Lines 99–101: What point is the author making? What emotion does this passage
evoke?
6. Lines 121–145: What type of an appeal does Paine use in lines 121–134? How is it
different from the other appeals in the text?
7. Lines 137–145: In which lines does Paine use parallelism to describe different
possibilities for the future?