A rhetorical question is a figure of speech

A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in which a speaker asks questions without intending to be answered. When addressing an audience, a speaker will phrase these questions in a variety of ways. A speaker's intentions to the listeners can vary depending on the rhetorical strategy used to pose the questions. The following are some of the rhetorical tactics used by the author of the poem "No Second Troy" in the Odyssey to advance his agenda.
The speaker's first rhetorical question in the poem is, "Why do I blame her?" Watson (1876) defines formalized formalized formalized formalized formalized formalized formalized formalized The speaker employs this rhetorical challenge to convey a sense of rage and resentment. The rhetoric question tries to show the intensity of suffering the speaker is subjected to by "Maud Gonne" after turning down his proposals several times. The live affair between the speaker and Maud Gonne used to fail because politically, Maud Gonne was more of a nationalist and radical.
The speaker goes on to use another rhetoric question in the fourth line of the poem. "Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Hand they but courage equal to desire?" (Watson 1876). This rhetoric question brings out a metaphoric meaning. The rhetoric question is used by the speaker to accuse Maud Gonne to do the simple. Those powerful people living in the "great" are being fought by poor people living in the little streets. In reality, it is hard for residents of Bronx to invade the Upper East Side, the "great streets," because the Upper East Side full of the British colonizers. The common folk referred here as "little street" lack the courage to overthrow British rule making it to the extreme recklessness although they have the desire.
The third rhetoric question is asked by the speaker in the sixth line, "what could have made her peaceful with a mind that nobleness made simple as a fire," (Watson 1876). The speaker uses this rhetoric technique to show the readers how the state of mind of Maud Gonne is captured by "fire". As we know that a mind of fire cannot be peaceful. This rhetoric technique also helps the speaker make his point that Maud Gonne has a noble personality that distinguishes her from a commoner or a simple person. It shows that no all emotions of Maud Gonne were conflicted and muddled up.
The last rhetoric technique has been used strategically in the last line of the poem by the speaker. The rhetoric question, "being high and solitary and most stern?" has been used by the speaker to show Maud Gonne character and beauty (Watson 1876). The statement in the question describes her as a person who can hold her own and not someone to mess with. The line gives her persona of a princess, a queen or a person who does not need anyone's validation has she is confident in her own worth.
In summary, a speaker can use rhetoric techniques in different ways to promote an agenda. Some of the ways a speaker uses rhetoric techniques to promote an agenda are; use of counteractive questions, asking and answering him/herself, asking a question and answering with another question and asking a question to drive listeners to his line of view.




Work cited
Watson, John Selly, ed. The odyssey of Homer. G. Bell,1876