Charles Heston Essay Analysis

AN ANALYSIS OF CHARLTON HESTON 'S ESSAY

The message of Charlton Heston 's speech is that there is a cultural war going on where the freedom to think and to express those thoughts in the way one believes to be right is being curtailed and that the audience who are students of Harvard Law School who are perceived to be champions of free thought must live up to this expectation even to the point of employing the method of peaceful civil disobedience as was done by Martin Luther King

This is an

appealing message to this specific audience because it played on the pride of the Harvard students of being champions of free thought ' and it serves to challenge them on living up to this expectation as stated earlier

Heston established his ethos by building on his various experiences in the movie industry , politics , civil activism and military through which he was able to establish his intelligence , character and goodwill . These are three traits which according to Aristotle builds up the credibility of a speaker (Griffin . First , he used his persona as a movie star where he related his triumph in portraying great men to his task at hand . To this effect he said , If my Creator gave me the gift to connect with the hearts and minds of those great men , then I want to use the same gift now to re-connect with your own sense of liberty , your own freedom of thought , your own compass for what is...