He doesn’t do it in a very majestic way, eliciting from the crowd some sort of reverence he deserves. As this average heighted person galloping about the crowd on his horse, he simply introduces himself. In this simple sentence, he made his ethos known. When William finally does, he says it in the most matter-of-fact way. In the film, many of the warriors in the crowd speculated and discussed who he was and how he looked before he even revealed himself. It is worth noting that prior to William giving his speech, most of the Scottish army had never seen him before. The speech will now be broken down line by line with an analysis of each item mentioned before (ethos, pathos, tropes, schemes). For obvious reasons, the speech delivered by William Wallace is observed to be given in the high style, because, as a result of his speech, his audience was moved to action. Roman rhetorician Cicero distinguished three levels of style a speaker can choose to speak in: a low style (used for teaching), a middle style (used for entertainment), and a high style (used to move an audience). Before I continue, it is also worth mentioning what kind of style this speech is given in. This speech will now be broken down by rhetorical analysis-specifically, the ethos (what kind of image the character projects to his audience) and pathos (how the character moves the emotions of his audience) of the movie’s speech will be examined, as well as the tropes (figurative uses of words through various expressive devices) and schemes (how words are arranged in a sentence) interwoven together that helps make this speech rhetorically significant. Right before the climatic battle between the Scottish and the English for Wallace’s countrymen’s freedom, he gives a speech to them that ultimately inspires them to go into the battle not knowing whether they would live or die.

Throughout the film William motivates his conspirators and army men with wise sayings that eventually inspire them to act to culminate in these heroics. Though the film has received criticism for its historical inaccuracies, William Wallace is not a fictional character, and one could imagine the heroics demonstrated in the film as actions he very well could have enacted in that time. It tells the story of the true events of William Wallace, a Scottish warrior who led his country in the first war of Scottish independence from England. If you haven’t watched it or heard of it before, I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a fan of epic war movies (think Gladiator, 300, Troy, etc.).

Brave heart speech