Rhetorical Devices in The Fallacy of Success

Chesterton has just described Midas as “a failure of an unusually painful kind.” Here, however, though he hides the accusation in a parenthetical, he implies not only that most other prominent persons would hide their ass-ears, but that they do. They are, like Midas, trying to conceal their foolishness from the world, and Midas’s failure is extrapolated to encompass “most other prominent and wealthy persons.”

Chesterton frequently uses extremes to convey the scale of his disdain for his subject. To contrast with the hyperbolic vehemence of his fictional excerpts, he uses understatement to describe a “decent little book” that conveys factual information pertinent to the situation he describes. Following so much empty blustering, the statement is appealing in its simplicity and clarity.

By paraphrasing the style of the books he derides, Chesterton hopes to demonstrate that he has, in fact, read them. It would be easy for him to mock these works without any firsthand knowledge of them, but his familiarity with their style and contents gives him authority as an informed speaker and weights his arguments with ethos, the appeal to that authority.

In this paragraph, Chesterton has devised a fictional conversation with his readers, who he speaks to directly as “you.” He is appealing to a shared human experience, that of wanting to acquire a skill, that readers are likely familiar with. This is an argument that uses pathos to engage readers in an emotional response as they place themselves in the fictional narrative Chesterton is creating.

A list of three parallel elements in succession is called a “tricolon,” and is a common rhetorical device. The tricolon serves both a rhythmic purpose, using repetition to build and reinforce the piece’s tone, and also an argumentative one, offering a memorable break from the more linear examples of parallelism and juxtaposition that tend to include only two comparative elements. Famous examples include [Antony’s “Friends, Romans, countrymen” from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar] (http://www.owleyes.org/text/julius-caesar/read/act-iii-scene-ii#root-71641-36), and [“we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground,” from Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.”] (http://www.owleyes.org/text/gettysburg-address/read/text-of-lincolns-speech) The tricolon Chesterton employs here combines with hyperbole to create an escalating sense of the of absurdity of the supposed wisdom of the books he mocks.

While it is not a strict example, this sentence loosely follows a pattern called chiasmus, in which the second portion of a parallel construction is grammatically inverted. Because Chesterton uses parallel construction so frequently, these instances of formal inversion stand out. Here, the inversion hides a flaw in Chesterton’s coming argument: if a donkey “succeeds” simply by being a donkey (in the lines following), then these men who have written books have succeeded simply by writing them.

Here Chesterton alludes to the seven deadly sins, a list of behaviors considered immoral according to Christian orthodoxy. The sins do not originate in the Bible; rather, they were introduced into Christian theology by Egyptian mystics in the 3rd-century CE. In his criticism of “Success” culture, Chesterton accuses those who pursue “Success” of the sins of avarice—that is, material greed—and pride—that is, selfishness. The other five sins are lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. In this section of the essay, Chesterton’s tactic has shifted; rather than attacking the idea of “Success” at the level of logic, he is attacking it at the level of morality.

Here Chesterton crafts another tricolon—a three-part parallel construction that posits two false definitions before landing on the proper formulation. Chesterton also makes use of internal rhyme. The phrase “mysticism of money” is a clear use of alliteration. “Cynicism” and “mysticism” rhyme through assonance, as the two words share identical vowel sounds. These musical flourishes contribute to Chesterton’s appeal to pathos; the rich sounds of his language help to drive home his arguments.

This aside makes an allusion to the “Little Englanders,” a loosely defined group of English citizens who, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, opposed English imperialism and expansionism. During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), in which England fought against the Dutch Boers in South Africa, the Little Englanders opposed England’s activities. Chesterton uses the Little Englanders as an example of people who are ostensibly working against their own purposes—a mistake for those seeking “Success,” as the books he mimics would have it.

After setting forth and supporting his own interpretation of “Success,” Chesterton describes the definition he will be contending with for the remainder of the essay. Though the writers of “Success” literature fail to define “Success” as such, Chesterton assumes that their aims are among the most time-tested and Darwinian: money and status. By criticizing the “bad logic and bad philosophy” of his subject, Chesterton makes an appeal at the level of logos.

This is an example of parallelism, or parallel construction, a device that Chesterton employs repeatedly throughout this essay. Parallelism serves to uphold the tone and rhythm of a work by chaining together multiple similarly formulated phrases which contribute to a point or argument. Here, the near-identical constructions of “the romances of chivalry were at least about chivalry” and “the religious tracts are about religion” prime readers for a similar description of the books about “Success.”

By engaging such disparate extremes—the “wildest romances” and the “dullest tracts”—Chesterton is employing hyperbole, or the use of exaggeration for rhetorical emphasis. He returns to this technique throughout, using it to subtly underpin his arguments while still rendering them entertaining to the reader.