Julius Caesar And Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms Speech

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Conflicting Perspectives provide diverse and provocative insights Composers of texts repeatedly have the common aim of persuading the audience into agreement or seek to gain empathy. The deliberate intention of the composer to inflict an incongruous perspective through the use of medium is represented through personalities, events and situations. Particularly, in both Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s infamous 1941 Four Freedoms speech, composer perspectives presented on historical events can be distorted, shaped, and reshaped to uniquely evoke a passionate response in the audience. Subtleties in the presentation of form overt a strong authenticity to text and provide a sustained theatrical license for the composer. Roosevelt speech was dictated in his small study on the second floor of the Whitehouse on January 1st, 1941. His speech was founded on the four essential human freedoms; freedom of speech, worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. These freedoms symbolized America’s war aims and gave hope to a war-wearied people as they now knew they were fighting for freedom. Accordingly, the four freedoms formed the basis of the world ethical principles found in the universal declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech are different forms of text, however both serve the common purpose of entertaining and inspiring their contextual audience. Particularly in Roosevelt’s speech, he needed to be an inspiring, rock solid leader as a majority of American’s believed in isolationism and the belief that the United States should continue to stay out of war. However, through the “Four Freedoms”, Roosevelt dictated such convincingl... ... middle of paper ... ...spective was that in support of imperialism and the autocratic ruling power. However, if he had not been influenced by his time and his support of his contemporary ruling power, perhaps this perspective would have been quite different. Contrastingly, Roosevelt presents himself as the resistant, leader in a time of anguish and crisis for his country. Although pressured by the oppressive world in his context, which definitely would have shaped his perspective, he used his situation to form a commune feeling in America and export a strong belief in resilience. Thus the effect of context on composer and therefore perspective can be seen in Roosevelt’s as well as in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Therefore, both texts, while entertaining and inspiring their contextual audience, provide conflicting perspectives that bring diverse and provocative insights to the surface.

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