Unit 2: Power, Propaganda, and the Art of Persuasion — Words of Radiance

• Read and analyze historical propaganda, contemporary advertising, and political speech alongside Words of Radiance, examining how Sanderson models the techniques of persuasion through Sadeas's court maneuvering, Shallan's Lightweaving, and the Alethi caste system's self-justifying narratives.

• Both analyze persuasive texts from Words of Radiance and create original persuasive writing, examining from the inside how the techniques work — and what ethical lines they cross.

• Identify and analyze rhetorical techniques of persuasion — appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos — and explain how those techniques operate in Words of Radiance's specific political contexts.

• Understand the ethical dimensions of persuasion through the contrast between Shallan's Lightweaving (used to investigate) and the Alethi hierarchy's propaganda (used to oppress).

• How does Sadeas's manipulation of Alethi politics — his willingness to sacrifice Bridge Four to gain gemhearts — demonstrate the difference between persuasion and manipulation?

• What does Shallan's infiltration of the Ghostbloods, using her Lightweaver abilities to become Veil, reveal about how propaganda requires an audience willing to be deceived?

This unit examines how power uses language, image, and narrative to shape belief and behavior through Words of Radiance, the second Stormlight Archive volume. Sadeas, Highprince of Information, has built his power on the careful management of what the Alethi highprinces believe and who they believe it about. Shallan Davar, a Lightweaver whose Surge of Illumination allows her to create convincing illusions, must navigate the Ghostbloods — a secret society — using fabricated identities that require understanding how people want to be deceived. And Kaladin, elevated from slave to bodyguard of the man he blames for his enslavement, must distinguish between the propaganda that made darkeyes enemies and the reality of individual people in front of him. Students analyze the techniques of propaganda and persuasion that Sanderson dramatizes across these three storylines.