Suggested
topics: theme(s) and structure; importance of the text within the
context of the author’s work and time; subject of the enunciation; point of
view and effect upon the reader/addressee; rhetoric and linguistic devices and
language tropes (descriptive or lyric manner, figures of speech, symbolism,
innovation / surprising markers, collocations, or pattern traces within the
author’s work); intertextuality with texts studied in this class or others.
The first two paragraphs of
the “Declaration of Independence” constitute the introduction of this
consensual document, first drafted by Thomas Jefferson, subsequently altered by
a committee and then revised and approved by its signataries, which is an index
of the democratic value of this text.
The
first paragraph starts with an adverb of time, announcing a change in the state
of affairs – “When… it becomes necessary” — whose commanding force is
reinstated by a repetition and explicitation in the second paragraph: “the
necessity which constrains them to ALTER their former systems of government.”
The pressing time is qualified by a series of collocations, stressing humanity
and nature. The primacy of the human
(“the course of human events” “a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind”) differs from the European tradition of divine right in statements of
sovereignty, deriving their power from God, which will be of consequence to the
legitimacy of the “truths” further stated. Also, the positionng of the noun
phrases “the power of the earth” and “the laws of nature” before the “laws of
God” not only develops a similar rhetoric strategy but hints at the priority of
“natural right”, alluding to important subtexts of political theory, namely
Locke’s Treatises of Government (1689)
and Paine’s Common Sense and the Rights
of Man (1776).
The
second paragraph presents a series of state verbs and generalized subjects
(“They are”, “it is”) to propose a number of facts and their corollary, leading
to the right and necessity for rebellion. It starts with a collective first-person
subject (“We”), which will reappear throughout the document to reference the
people who make this claim (opposing them to a single tyrant – the king, “He” –
in the subsequent paragraphs). The attribute “self evident” to refer to the
stated “truths” is an overdetermined collocation, as it encapsulates the
pronoun “self”, alluding to the power of the individual, and the adjective
“evident”, which presupposes things that are manifest and proven. At the end of
the paragraph, the purpose “to prove” and the announced presentation of “facts”
will reinforce this idea.
The
truths that are enunciated should be equated with the illuminist and
rationalist ideals that led to the revolutions of the end of the 18th
century: the American and the French. Equality is the first tenet (“all men are
created equal”), though it is interesting to notice the nuance applied to the
“inalienable rights” to equality: whereas in Jefferson’s draft these were
“inherent” rights, pointing to Locke’s and Paine’s abovementioned theory of
“natural rights”, in the final document they are restricted to “certain”
rights, perhaps suggesting the necessary limitations imposed by a government
that decided not to infringe the institution of slavery. The following tenets
are interesting when compared to the French triad, “liberté, equalité,
fraternité”. The Declaration of Independence seems to forego, at this point,
“fraternity,” in favour of “life” and “the pursuit of happiness”, paving the
way to individualism and pragmatism. This underlying ideology resurfaces in the
words “safety and happiness” chosen to explicitate the people’s values, which
cannot be affected. These are said to be threatened by “a long train of abuses
and usurpation,” a slight hyperbole, reinforcing the claim that the struggle
for independence is not “for light and transient causes” but for sufferings
endured overtime.
Finally,
the references to “despotism” and to “tyranny” evince the excesses of power of
monarchy, which the world (qualified, in an understatement, as “candid”) must
be prepared to question, moving on to new systems of government, as the
signataries of the document propose to do. The stance they take, therefore, was
perhaps not so much forced by circumstances but meant to be exemplary of a new,
democratic state of affairs.
