Persuasion and Rational Argument

Persuasion and rational argument are presented as essential skills whose authority is weakening inside the university. For William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the problem is not merely that people disagree: faculty factions and students alike often treat discussion as a way to entrench positions rather than reconsider them. The contrast between reasoned debate and persuasion through pressure runs from department politics into his classroom, where a lesson about argument becomes an unsettling test of who can speak, who is heard, and what counts as convincing.

The university as a contested rhetorical space

In a Friday-afternoon class near the end of term, William Henry Devereaux, Jr. is teaching persuasion to sparse attendance. He has not persuaded his freshmen that persuasion itself matters. Blair, a pale and thoughtful student whom he has tried throughout the term to coax into speaking confidently, seems especially unconvinced. She avoids argument in part because she fears ridicule from less capable classmates. In Devereaux’s account, silence has become a practical defense: students may prefer invisibility to the risk of speaking in a setting where the loudest voices are not necessarily the most informed.

He connects this classroom silence to the university’s intellectual divisions. He sees professors associated with different schools of thought occupying guarded intellectual communities, more concerned with protecting territory and advancing agendas than talking across differences. Faculty meetings have left him unable to recall anyone changing position through reasoned discussion. The apparent purpose of academic debate, as he describes it, is often to become more firmly committed to the view one already held. His diagnosis is sharpened by self-criticism: he has recently failed to persuade Dickie Pope, Herbert Schonberg, Paul Rourke, Gracie DuBois, and Finny, the English Department Instructor, as well as Finny the Goose. Even Leo remains unconvinced when Devereaux explains that a student anthology soliciting publication fees is a scam, or when he urges Leo to write a story without violence.

Persuasion as political leverage

The same difficulty operates in departmental and labor politics, where argument is entangled with alliances and consequences. Herbert Schonberg presents Devereaux as a potential point man in a union fight, reasoning that the English Department has more votes than any other department and that Devereaux might rally its members. He also tells him that Teddy Barnes and June Barnes have spoken with him, an alignment that surprises Devereaux because they have rarely sided with Paul Rourke and Finny, the English Department Instructor. The appeal is double-edged: Devereaux is told that he is indispensable, while also being made to understand that his department and friends may already be aligning against him.

Herbert’s request is ultimately less about abstract principle than about choosing a side. He asks Devereaux to state whether he will join the union’s cause or make common cause with Dickie Pope, warning that neutrality could leave him friendless. The rhetoric is effective partly because its subtext is clear even while its surface presents Devereaux as valued. Elsewhere, Billy Quigley uses an overtly personal threat: if Devereaux will not act on the budget issue, Billy says he will never forgive him and will vote with Finny, the English Department Instructor, and the Jesuit in an effort to recall him. Devereaux recognizes this as a lie, but also recognizes the conviction beneath it. The episode distinguishes the truth of a claim from its persuasive force: a threat may be factually unreliable and still expose fear, loyalty, or desperation.

Institutional action makes this distinction consequential. Near the end of term, Herbert calls for a strike vote, explaining that preventing seniors from graduating is among the faculty’s few available forms of political leverage. Later, after Dickie Pope is dismissed and Jacob Rose becomes chief executive, the faculty votes overwhelmingly against a strike, despite the union’s position and the interests of faculty such as Finny, the English Department Instructor, who would be affected by budget cuts. The reversal shows how decisions respond not only to arguments but also to changing leadership, perceived trust, and the costs members expect to bear.

The classroom test: a threat and its audience

The sharpest practical test comes after Devereaux has publicly threatened to kill a duck a day until he receives a budget. His afternoon composition class feels mistreated: students have been asked to advise him in essays, then learn that he has already killed a goose before they have handed in their work. Some also witnessed his on-camera interview, during which he did not deny being responsible, and heard his implied threat to continue. Devereaux separates the essays into two unequal piles. Most recommend that he follow through, reasoning that a threat loses credibility if its speaker backs down. Their analogies to foreign policy and war are, in his view, historically inaccurate and logically faulty, yet the students cheer them.

Among the twenty-three students, roughly six dare to show disagreement. Blair is visibly distressed but remains silent, while Devereaux understands that she expects him, as the person paid to teach, to challenge the majority. He initially reads three anonymous essays aloud in hopes that their authors will hear their own reasoning and encounter doubt. Instead, the class’s enthusiasm for increasingly outrageous comparisons suppresses dissent. Persuasion has certainly occurred, but not through careful reasoning: students reinforce one another’s position, and their collective confidence makes it harder for anyone to oppose it.

When Devereaux asks why Blair was right to be surprised by his public threat, neither she nor the rest of the class answers. He explains that the threat was comic, delivered by a man wearing a fake nose and glasses, and that carrying a comic threat into serious consequences makes no sense. His argument fails to persuade. The lesson ends where it began, with the class unconvinced and the distinction between comedy and tragedy unsettled by what they have witnessed. The sequence exposes the weakness in Devereaux’s own position: he wants students to recognize a boundary between comic performance and consequential action, but his public threat and the goose’s death have made that boundary difficult for them to accept.

Speaking, silence, and ethical recognition

Blair’s departure gives the episode its clearest reversal. Devereaux tells her that being right accomplishes little if she will not speak. She replies that she would rather be wrong, hurriedly gathers her belongings, and leaves with the class watching. Her response shows the cost of treating argument as a purely intellectual exercise: correctness does not guarantee a hearing, and pressure to speak can itself become another burden. No one answers Devereaux’s subsequent question, and even a student who had been waiting with a raised hand remains silent.

Bobo, the student Devereaux has threatened with failure if he misses another class, eventually identifies the ethical problem in the way Blair was treated. Devereaux recognizes this as a persuasive ethical position. That recognition does not mean the class has been won over to his account of comic threats, nor does it erase the way the majority silenced dissent. Instead, the moment isolates a different kind of persuasion: Bobo’s judgment is compelling because it names the harm done to a classmate, not because it dominates the room or supplies a grand analogy.

The concept therefore remains deliberately unresolved. Devereaux teaches reasoned argument while watching institutional factions rely on leverage, students mistake forceful consensus for sound reasoning, and a quieter student withdraws rather than risk speaking. The narrative does not present persuasion as a reliable cure for conflict; it shows how argument depends on conditions that allow dissent to be heard, and how easily those conditions give way to loyalty, fear, ridicule, or strategic pressure.