Kyle Cueto

9/11/13
2nd Period
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Essay
One of the effective rhetorical devices that Edwards had used was the comparison of a
spiders web trying to stop a falling rock to the puritans trying to redeem themselves. The web
itself is an image of our healthy constitution, our own care, prudence, and our righteousness
while the falling rock is an image of the consequences of angering God or Gods wrath itself.
The comparison of the web trying to stop a falling rock to humans is a way of saying that you are
defenseless against Gods wrath. In order to imply that what we are doing does not benefit us
spiritually, he compares our wickedness to the heaviness of lead and said that it is bringing us
closer to hell. The line You hang by a slender thread is a metaphor comparing us to a spider. It
can also mean that with what we are doing is angering God and we are close to receiving Gods
punishment. His use of parallelism in the last paragraph emphasizes the effect of the point he is
trying to bring across which is that unless you change your ways then you are powerless to stop
yourself from receiving Gods wrath which in this case means going to hell.