Not "nature" as in "let's go look at the pretty birds in the pretty trees," which sadly doesn't appear in the Declaration of Independence, but rather the idea of what inherently exists in the world...

This may seem like a super obvious motif…but it's a pretty important one. Scratch that: it's the most important one. The Declaration of Independence isn't just about breaking away from a particul...

People don't really talk about the giant list that Jefferson includes in the Declaration of Independence. Somehow, lines like "For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us" (23) just don't...

A good portion of the Declaration of Independence is about what people are entitled to, just for existing. Some of Jefferson's ideas are grandiose, discussing mankind as a whole…take the entire f...

Right, this probably sounds like a silly motif to talk about—the dang parchment is called The Declaration of Independence, after all. It's important to remember, however, that Jefferson is writin...

Before the long list of King George III's mean, oppressive tactics, Jefferson introduces the section like this: "To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world" (2). After a paragraph of i...

Jefferson adds religious language into the Declaration of Independence at the beginning and the end, generally as a way to justify the declaration by implying that God's on the side of the colonist...

A chunk of Jefferson's argument comes through the juxtaposition between the colonies and the British, where the British are oppressors of the suffering colonists, naturally.Jefferson begins the tex...