Before saying "ciao ciao" to The Sopranos on HBO, let's be sure to thank Tony and his crew for their generous gifts to the field of rhetoric.

Anthony J. Soprano--a rhetorician? That foul-mouthed wiseguy who garroted a squealer, suffocated a second cousin, and (in a memorable instance of antonomasia) “Marvin Gayed his own nephew”? A persuasive character, certainly, but just when did clip, hit, pop, and whack enter the lexicon of rhetorical studies?

Call me a jamook, if you want, but my premise is simple: day in and day out, everyone contributes to the art of rhetoric. (On occasion, even animated characters.)

Uncle Junior's Parables

If rhetoric simply meant eloquence, we'd have to go back a generation to Tony's Uncle Junior, Corrado Soprano. Junior knows how to massage a metaphor, as in his explanation of what's demanded of a boss: "You steer the ship the best way you know. Sometimes it's smooth. Sometimes you hit the rocks."

Junior also knows how to compress a parable into a single sentence. Speaking of Tony's mother, he once said, "Livia is like the woman with a Virginia ham under each arm, crying cause she hasn’t got any bread.” And Junior knows exactly where he stands: "If I delegate," he once said, in a firm epizeuxis, "I delegate."

But these days, locked up in a "nut house" and cut off from the action, Uncle Junior is merely a relic from a bygone era. Compared to his Prozac-popping nephew, Junior projects an ethos of stoic acceptance and self-control. “You choose this life," he once reminded Tony. "It comes with responsibilities. Teddy Roosevelt gave an entire speech once with a bullet lodged in his chest. Some things are a matter of duty."

Tony's Proverbs

Those days are gone, as Tony haltingly explained to his psychiatrist, Dr. Malfi, in the pilot episode:

I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over. . . . I think about my father. He never reached the heights like me. But in a lot of ways he had it better. He had his people. They had their standards. They had pride. Today, what do we got?

What we got (or had, depending on when you're reading this) is a friend of ours whose favorite method of communicating (knuckles and bullets and curses aside) is through proverbs, almost always parallel in form and often antithetical:

• You may not love me but you will respect me.
• Those who want respect, give respect.
• Once you're into this family, there's no getting out.
• If you can quote the rules, then you can obey them.
• A wrong decision is better than indecision.
• When guys are on the mattresses they’re not out earning.
• One thing my father taught me is that a pint of blood costs more than a gallon of gold.

“Proverbs are the wisdom of the people” goes an old Italian saying, and long ago another wise guy, Aristotle, recognized their persuasive power. In Book Two of his Rhetoric, Aristotle defined proverbs (or maxims) as compact forms of community wisdom. Their rhetorical force, he said, derives from their familiarity.

Proverbs and Cliches

"Fiddlesticks!" some might say (or something to that effect). Tony is just spouting cliches. And it's true that Tony sometimes bungles even the simplest bromide: "I’m willing to move forward. Let the past be bygones." At other times his proverbs seem to lack conviction: "You know my feelings: every day is a gift. It's just, does it have to be a pair of socks?"

In any case, Aristotle would probably argue that Tony's proverbs are effective precisely because they are cliches. Tony employs truisms to flatter the people around him--people whose world views have been shaped by the very same cliches.

Nevertheless, it's likely that Aristotle would discourage Tony's son, A.J., from following in dad's rhetorical footsteps. "It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims," he observed. "They risk appearing to mouth a common saying that hasn’t yet been learned through experience."

That said, it may also be foolish to draw any conclusions at this time--a few days before the airing of the final episode. So let's leave the last words (an ominous epanalepsis) to Tony Soprano's nemesis, Phil Leotardo: “Next time there won’t be a next time.”

In the meantime, western rhetoric carries on, now in its (roughly) 2,500th year. If you'd like to catch up, visit Definitions of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Image: James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in The Sopranos © HBO.