Rhetorical Devices in Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat

The final line of Churchill’s speech appears in quotation marks, though its origins are unclear. The note with which Churchill ends the speech is a decisive call-to-action to the British people, whose aid he feels “entitled to claim.” The sentence is structured as a mandate, as Churchill begins with the firm but inviting “Come then.” In an appeal to pathos, Churchill calls for unity among the population and creates the image of an accumulated national strength.

In this simple statement, Churchill makes explicit the stakes of Britain’s struggle against Germany. The purpose of victory is the essential task of survival. To evoke such a struggle is a clear appeal to pathos, for it taps into the most basic of animal instincts.

This passage is an example of epizeuxis, a rhetorical device by which a single word is repeated continuously in order to emphasize a central idea. In Churchill’s case, the idea is the aim of victory, which he underscores by repeating the word “victory” five times over the course of the paragraph. The incantatory effect of this focused repetition constitutes a powerful appeal to pathos.

Churchill appeals to pathos, to his audience’s emotions, when he characterizes Germany as “a monstrous tyranny.” The image of a monster evokes fear in a primal sense, and the threat of tyranny produces fear of a political—though still powerful—kind. Churchill also stirs fear and anger by using a superlative construction, framing the threat of the Axis powers as the greatest yet in the “dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime.”

In this sentence, Churchill lays out the central thesis of his speech. The goal of his administration, he makes clear, is to fight against the Axis Powers and to win. We see elegant devices in the alliteration of “wage war” and the tricolon construction of “sea, land and air.” Finally, Churchill makes an appeal to ethos in his invocation to God, which suggests that his wartime cause is divinely warranted, as is the broader British drive toward victory.

This is an example of a rhetorical question, known in the Latin tradition as erotema, a question that is posed but which requires no answer. In many cases, the answer to the rhetorical question is obvious by context. In this case, Churchill anticipates his audience’s questions before answering them in detail. This device engages the audience by imitating the rhythms of the question-and-answer exchange.

If the first four paragraphs of the speech represent a necessary setting of the political and geopolitical scene, the final two represent an urgent call-to-arms. In these concluding passages, Churchill makes a more concerted effort to heighten the power of his language. We see Churchill’s elevated rhetorical pitch in sentences such as this one, in which subtle repetitions and alliterations produce a distinctly musical effect.

As Churchill notes, he had uttered this famous sentence earlier on the day of May 13th when he met with his new cabinet members. The phrase proved strong enough to warrant a repeat use before the significantly larger House of Commons—strong enough to become to title of this now-famous speech. The phrase “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” has entered common parlance—often as “blood, sweat, and tears”—thanks to Churchill’s impassioned use of it, though its origins lie in the annals of Christian scripture and commentary. With its quaternity of visceral, bodily images and consonant-bound monosyllabic words, the phrase is evocative, punchy, and memorable.