Pearse gives us a great insight into his approach to promoting Irish Independce with his oration at the graveside of Jerimiah O’Donovan Rossa. Pearse was at the time only an average member of the IRB, he had not yet been moved up the ranks and into the inner core as would happen to him in the near future. He was a writer and a poet with a history as a member of the Irish volunteers , so when Tom Clarke asked him to give the oration at O’Donovan Rossa’s grave and to “make it hot as hell” Pearse took the opportunity and decided to seize it as a way to rally the Irish people against the English using persuasive speech techniques , such as emotions like sadness :
“In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever before or perhaps ever again, in a spiritual communion with those of his day, living and dead, who suffered with him in English prisons, in communion of spirit too with our own dear comrades who suffer in English prisons to-day, and speaking on their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to Ireland our love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate.”…show more content… They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! - they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at