Name
Date
from SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD
COPY MASTER
Reading Skill
ANALYZE EMOTIONAL APPEALS
Emotional appeals are messages that persuade an audience by creating strong
feelings rather than by using facts and evidence. Writers often use sensory language
to create vivid imagery and loaded words to create these types of feelings:
• fear, which taps into people’s fear of losing their safety and security
• pity, which takes advantage of people’s sympathy and compassion for others
• guilt, which relies on people’s sense of ethics or morality
Directions: In the chart, record examples of language used to appeal to the
audience’s emotions. One example has been done for you.
Examples
Emotional Appeals
“arrows of death fly unseen” (line 21)
Appeals to fear by creating anxiety, unease
Just as easy as it is to squish a worm, it is
equally as easy for God to send us to hell.
(lines 1-2).
Fear because your life can be easily taken
away
God can automatically send you to hell, which Fear because we have no control over where
is a bottomless pit (lines 67-69).
we go in the afterlife.
God is as angry with the sinners as to the
people in hell (lines 29-30).
Fear because God’s anger can strike anyone
down who has been reborn.
“And they have done nothing in the least to
appease or abate that anger” (lines 30-31).
Guilt because those that have been reborn
have done nothing to stop the wrath of God
from sending them to hell.
Resource Manager
Unit 1
American Literature
179