RHETORIC AND/ VS.
DEMOCRACY
IMPORTANT DATES AND DETAILS!

Your essay should be between 1200 and 1500
words long.

Please post to Google Docs a copy of your THESIS
PARAGRAPH by class time on Tuesday, February 15
(TR section), or Wednesday, February 16 (MW
section).

Your first full draft is due on Google Docs by class
time on Tuesday, February 22 (TR class), or
Wednesday, February 23 (MW class).
THE ASSIGNMENT!
Your task in this paper is to write a carefully reasoned and well
supported essay, based upon your interpretation of Plato’s
Gorgias, in response to the following question:
Is the practice of rhetoric good for democracy or
bad for it? And why?
Your essay should have two parts:
• In the first part, you’ll explain your argument and the
reasoning behind it by reference to Plato’s Gorgias. Here,
as you explain whether and to what extent you agree or
disagree with Socrates, you’ll define your key terms and
make your major arguments.
• In the second part, you’ll support your arguments by
applying them to a contemporary example. You’ll select
an instance of current rhetorical discourse and show how it
bears out the arguments for or against rhetoric that you
made in the first part of the essay. You may use any of the
speeches we examined in Module 2 or, if you like, you may
choose a different example, provided that you can supply
me with a link to or transcript of the text (and provided
that the text is in English).
Be certain to ground ALL of your claims — in both parts of the
essay — in an analysis of quotations from the relevant texts.
And be certain to CITE the sources of your quotations in MLA
style. You can find a good guide here:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
(For citation purposes, treat our embedded copy of the
Gorgias as an electronic source and cite it on your Works
Cited page as follows:
Plato. Gorgias. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. Web 4 July 2010.
<http://www.scribd.com/doc/33888328/Gorgias>