"The Crisis" by Thomas Paine is an extremely persuasive document. Part of this success is the fact that it contains many excellent exercises on rhetoric. One of the literary devices that is present in this text is antithesis. Antithesis is a rhetorical device in which two ideas which are usually opposed are placed together in a sentence in order to achieve a contrasting effect. In this text, an example of antithesis would be:
<em>"What we attain too cheap we esteem too lightly."</em>
<span>Antithesis is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition. An example of antithesis in "The Crisis" is what we attain too cheap we esteem too lightly.
