32 pages • 1 hour read
Samuel HuntingtonThe Clash of Civilizations
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Tone
As a literary device, tone involves a writer’s stance (often emotional) toward what they are discussing. Conveyed through means such as diction and syntax, tone implicitly aims to influence the reader’s reception of a text. Huntington’s tone throughout the essay is authoritative and analytical but also familiar and accessible. For example, he first disagrees with some intellectuals of the era when establishing his own argument, writing, “Yet they all miss a crucial, indeed a central, aspect of what global politics is likely to be in the coming years” (Paragraph 1). Interjections such as “indeed” contribute to a conversational tone, suggesting that Huntington is developing his argument as he writes and amending it accordingly. Similarly, in Paragraph 4, he calls the Western powers the “movers and shakers of history,” an idiom that distinguishes his writing from more academic nonfiction prose. While he incorporates geopolitical knowledge and insight from his political background, he ensures that his discussion of these topics is approachable.
However, it is important to note that the “average” citizen he is appealing to is assumed to be Western and most likely a US citizen. The essay’s likely audience not only informs how Huntington makes his argument but also contributes itself to that argument’s rhetorical force. By making the kinds of broad geopolitical statements that he does, Huntington frames himself as familiar and trustworthy; readers of Foreign Affairs are likely predisposed to sympathize with Huntington’s perspective, so he can operate with an established rapport when writing for them. Conversely, this assumption of shared common ground may have a different tonal effect for non-Western readers who do not necessarily agree with Huntington’s basic framework.
Hypophora
Hypophora is a literary device similar to a rhetorical question. However, where a rhetorical question goes unanswered in the text (though the answer is often implied), hypophora involves posing a question and then immediately answering it.
Huntington uses this technique to set the terms of the discussion. For example, beginning in Paragraph 5, he explores the “nature” of civilizations, capitalizing on the abstract nature of this concept to supply his own definition, on which he structures his argument. He asks, “What do we mean when we talk of a civilization? A civilization is a cultural entity” (Paragraph 6). He then expands on this definition to suit contemporary circumstances and his own thesis, conglomerating world cultures into merely the West and its non-Western opposite. This essay, in large part, addresses an everyday reader who may not be able to structure a political or philosophical response to Huntington’s assertion about what a civilization is. Relying on this presumed inability to strictly define civilization, he implicitly invites readers to share his own viewpoint by ascribing it not to himself but to an undefined “we.”
Contrast
Huntington supports many of his points through the use of contrast, or the illustration of difference. This technique corresponds to his broader discussion of the potential for conflict, which inherently requires opposing sides with differing features. Although he mentions numerous contrasts between nations, cultures, and wider civilizations, he notes religion as the primary source of opposition between what he calls the West and the non-West. Judaism and Western Christianity, the latter consisting largely of Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism, are the general faiths that Huntington ascribes to the West; Orthodox Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam are among the faiths in opposition to the West. While he draws some basic comparisons between all these religions, he argues that the differences between them will contribute to major conflicts in the future. His use of contrast is thus intertwined with his most sweeping and arguably reductive claims; for example, as an Abrahamic faith, Islam has more in common with Christianity and Judaism than it does with Hinduism or Buddhism, while Orthodox Christianity shares more still with what Huntington calls “Western” Christianity.
Metaphor
A metaphor is a comparison between two apparently dissimilar things. Though most commonly associated with poetry and narrative fiction, metaphor also features in much nonfiction. In “The Clash of Civilizations?,” one of the most important metaphors likens the boundaries (physical or symbolic) between civilizations to fault lines: breaks between tectonic plates that cause earthquakes and volcanic activity. The metaphor therefore communicates the potentially incendiary nature of civilizational influence while also underscoring it as a global phenomenon (as geological fault lines occur around the world).
