Genre
Philosophical dialogue
Setting and Context
Athens in the 4th century BCE
Narrator and Point of View
The dialogue has no narrator, but the point of view is slightly skewed towards Socrates' interlocutors, who, like the reader, don't know what to make of his odd counter-intuitive statements.
Tone and Mood
The tone of Gorgias is by turns playful and serious. Socrates and his interlocutors are modeled after stock comic characters from Greek comedy, and much of the fun of the dialogue involves watching Socrates humiliate his overconfident debating partners by claiming to know nothing. In the last third of the dialogue, however, we get a glimpse of Socrates' worldview, which is in many ways a pessimistic one: that life is transitory, that knowledge is always incomplete, and that our desires are often our masters. The dialogue also foreshadows Socrates' death, when Callicles says that Socrates would have no idea how to defend himself in front of a court, which ended up being true and causing Socrates' death.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Socrates vs. Gorgias, Callicles, Polus
Major Conflict
Between rhetoric and philosophy
Climax
The dialogue climaxes with Socrates' description of the Judgment of Naked Souls, that moment in the afterlife when the soul will stand naked before the gods and be judged not for its worldly success but for its virtue. Socrates uses this powerful image to end his argument.
Foreshadowing
Callicles foreshadows Socrates' eventual death when he says that Socrates' counter-intuitive arguments would render him powerless in front of a court.
Understatement
Socrates frequently says that he knows nothing—but in fact, he is clearly the most intelligent speaker in the dialogue.
Allusions
Socrates alludes to Pythagoras, an important earlier philosopher
Imagery
Socrates frequently uses the image of bodily health to describe what it means for the soul to search for the good and the true. He also uses different kinds of expertise, like ship-building or cooking, to try and discern what rhetoric really is. He concludes that rhetoric is the equivalent of cooking unhealthy but sweet-tasting pastries.
Paradox
Parallelism
Socrates regularly argues that the mind and the body are parallel to one another. Just as we have knowledge of the body, and know what is healthy for it, we need knowledge of the soul.
