John Winthorp Assertion Analysis

    John Winthorp asserts that his paritioners are the figurative "people on the hill" and that they must uphold their "perfect" religious lifestyle in order to succeed in the New World. There is much emphasis on what would happen if anyone failed to do their part for their religion. This instills a feeling of anxiety amongst the paritioners to do their best and to not fail, or they will all suffer the consequences.
    In order to convey this assertion, John Winthorp uses syntax and simile. The entire "paragraph" is actually just one sentence; giving no time for the paritioners to think about what Winthorp is saying. The paritioners just accept it and move on. They also believe that they are superior to others or are the "city on the hill". Winthorp persaudes them to believe that they are better than others through the use of simile.

Plato Assertion Analysis

    In Plato's rhetorical question, he asserts that he is trying to make people begin to question life and how life affects people. Plato raises the question of how we perceive reality, whether we are living it through being asleep and dreaming or actually being awake and living reality as it is happening. His goal of making us think this way is to get people to begin to question life in order to learn more from it.
    In order to prove his assertion, Plato uses paradox and rhetorical questioning. The very question Plato asked is a paradox because he could be right and he could also be wrong at the same time. Both answers would work because nobody knows the true nature of life. The question he used is also a rhetorical question because it wasn't asked to obtain an answer, it was asked to make people think and question life.