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Rhetorical analysis of helen kellers speech
Rhetorical analysis of helen kellers speech
The Story of Helen Keller Chapter Two
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On January 5th 1916, Helen Keller delivered a powerful and passionate speech to a crowd of hardworking American citizens. She was trying to persuade her audience that World War 1 would not be beneficial for them, but actually detrimental. Keller was not in support of the war because she claimed that it would only benefit the upper class. Comparisons to previous wars and imagery are two other techniques that Helen Keller used to convince her audience, the working class, that giving their support to World War 1 would be unadvisable. An arguement that Keller makes for not supporting the war is that the United States is only looking out for themselves and not the working class. In the second paragraph, Keller states, "congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States. It is planning to protect the capital of American speculators and investors". Keller believes that the government is not putting its citizens first and therefore the citizens should not be supportive of the United States. Even though it is the citizens who work tirelessly everyday to create a better future for …show more content…
their country, the United States and congress only want to protect the rich capitalists and investors. Keller urges her audience to not support the war because the rich will only get richer from the war while also getting protection from the government and the middle and lower class will recieve nothing in return. Notonly does Keller mention that the people of the United States will be left defenseless in the war, she also mentions exploitation.
Keller says that American labor has been exploited for the capital, but the workers have recieved much less. Many scrape by, just making enough money to support themselves and their families. Keller also states that "every modern war has had its roots in exploitation". She compares the exploitaion in the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the South African War, and the Russo Japanese War to the exploitaion that would occur in World War 1. Exploitation is a negative concept that the audienceelen Keller is addressing wants no part in. Keller is equating supporting the war to also supporting exploitation. This is a significant technique that is used in order to persuade the working class in to being against the United States joining World War
1. The final literary technique that Helen Keller uses in her speech is imagery. In her concluding paragraph Helen Keller says, "immemorial men have followed with blind loyalty the strong men who had the power of money and of armies. Even while battlefields were piled high with their own dead, they have tilled the lands of the rulers and have been robbed of the fruits of their own labor". This quote paints a picture in the audiences' minds of soldiers dead while fighting for their country and farmers working day and night for produce that will be taken away. Despite all of the workers hardwork, they are under the control of the rich capitalists who make the important decisions while the working class gets no input. By creating the imagery, Keller encourages her audience to take a stand and say no to the capital and the government instead of blindly following their commands. Throughout her speech, Helen Keller empowers her audience and urges them o do things for their own interest and to not support World War 1 because it will only benefit the upper class. The usage of comparison and imagery also contribute greatly to the persuasion of Keller's audience to sppose the war. Keller observes that all a person needs to do in order to voice their opinion against the war it to "straighten up and fold you arms".
Soon after launch on January 28th, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart and shattered the nation. The tragedy was on the hearts and minds of the nation and President Ronald Reagan. President Reagan addressed the county, commemorating the men and woman whose lives were lost and offering hope to Americans and future exploration. Reagan begins his speech by getting on the same level as the audience by showing empathy and attempting to remind us that this was the job of the crew. He proceeds with using his credibility to promise future space travel. Ultimately, his attempt to appeal to the audience’s emotions made his argument much stronger. Reagan effectively addresses the public about the tragedy while comforting, acknowledging, honoring and motivating his audience all in an effort to move the mood from grief to hope for future exploration.
Silent Spring is one of the most important books of the environmental movement. It was one of the first scientific books to talk about destruction of habitat by humans. As a result, one can imagine that Ms. Rachel Carson needed to be quite persuasive. How does she achieve this? In this excerpt from Silent Spring, Carson utilizes the rhetorical devices of hyperbole, understatement, and rhetorical questions to state the necessity of abolishing the practice of using poisons such as parathion. Carson starts out by using the symbiotic nature of hyperbole and understatement to paint the whole practice as dangerous and unnecessary. She further strengthens her argument by using rhetorical questions to make her readers see the ethical flaws and potential casualties caused by deadly pesticides.
The AP Language and Composition course is purely designed to help students excel in their own stories, but more importantly, become more attentive to their surroundings. A conscientious goal, that would properly be attained through the collection of nonfiction paperbacks. Because of the purpose of this course and the current state of today’s children, one must undeniably agree that in selecting the “perfect book”, the overall idea of self-reliance would hold a prominent factor. This curriculum not only focuses on the rhetorical analysis of nonfiction texts, but it attempts to make students distinguish how the world plays with the dialectic of persuasion, also known as the art of rhetoric. In doing so, this course aims at making students aware
For years the LGBT community has been consistently denied the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, and it wasn’t until last year that same sex marriage became legal throughout the United States. However, they are not the only minorities being discriminated against in the United States. That is why Dolores Huerta, a well-known civil rights activist, points out that people who have experienced oppression should come together to achieve equality. In her keynote speech at the 21st National Conference on LGBT Equality, Dolores Huerta uses ethos, logos, and pathos as an effective way to inspire her audience to make a change in society.
... was strictly a congressman’s war. “With all the silence and dignity of creators you can end wars and the system of selfishness and exploitation that causes wars. All you need to do to bring about this stupendous revolution is to straighten up and fold your arms.” She claimed that if Americans could strike against the war we could “Be heroes in an army of construction” (Keller, 4).
Samir Boussarhane During the early 20th century in the U.S, most children of the lower and middle class were workers. These children worked long, dangerous shifts that even an adult would find tiresome. On July 22, 1905, at a convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Philadelphia, Florence Kelley gave a famous speech regarding the extraneous child labor of the time. Kelley’s argument was to add laws to help the workers or abolish the practice completely.
“He say Mr. Parris must be kill! Mr. Parris no goodly man, Mr. Parris mean man and no gentle man and he bid me rise out of bed and cut your throat!” (Miller 47).
In the passage from Silent Spring, renowned biologist Rachel Carson utilizes rhetorical strategies such as ethos, hyperbole, and understatement to call for an end to the harmful use of pesticides. She uses a tactful combination of hyperboles and understatements, and indicates her authority to speak on the topic by demonstrating appeals to ethos.
In the late nineteenth century, many European immigrants traveled to the United States in search of a better life and good fortune. The unskilled industries of the Eastern United States eagerly employed these men who were willing to work long hours for low wages just to earn their food and board. Among the most heavily recruiting industries were the railroads and the steel mills of Western Pennsylvania. Particularly in the steel mills, the working conditions for these immigrants were very dangerous. Many men lost their lives to these giant steel-making machines. The immigrants suffered the most and also worked the most hours for the least amount of money. Living conditions were also poor, and often these immigrants would barely have enough money and time to do anything but work, eat, and sleep. There was also a continuous struggle between the workers and the owners of the mills, the capitalists. The capitalists were a very small, elite group of rich men who held most of the wealth in their industries. Strikes broke out often, some ending in violence and death. Many workers had no political freedom or even a voice in the company that employed them. However, through all of these hardships, the immigrants continued their struggle for a better life.
Florence Kelley was a social and political reformer that fought for woman’s suffrage and child labor laws. Her speech to the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association initiated a call to action for the reform of child labor laws. She explains how young children worked long and exhausting hours during the night and how despicable these work conditions were. Kelley’s use of ethos, logos, pathos, and repetition helps her establish her argument for the reform of the child labor laws.
I chose this word because the tone of the first chapter seems rather dark. We hear stories of the hopes with which the Puritans arrived in the new world; however, these hopes quickly turned dark because the Purtains found that the first buildings they needed to create were a prison, which alludes to the sins they committed; and a cemetery, which contradicts the new life they hoped to create for themselves.
As the American people’s standards and principles has evolved over time, it’s easy to forget the pain we’ve caused. However, this growth doesn’t excuse the racism and violence that thrived within our young country not even a century previous. This discrimination, based solely on an ideology that one’s race is superior to another, is what put many people of color in miserable places and situations we couldn’t even imagine today. It allowed many Caucasian individuals to inflict pain, through both physical and verbal attacks, and even take away African Americans ' God given rights. In an effort to expose upcoming generations to these mass amounts of prejudice and wrongdoing, Harper Lee 's classic novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, tells the story of
In closing, W.D Howells is successful in his use of these methods of argument. “Editha” paints a clear picture of the men who must fight and the people who casually call for war. He proves Editha’s motives are unworthy of devotion. After all, it is easy to sit back and call for war when it will be the common enlisted man who will die to provide this luxury. In the end, Howells made his point clear. War never comes without sacrifice or consequence.
It is hardly reasonable to expect a man who will forgo employment that allows such benefits like the necessity of food to attend to the needs of a war. Yet some people criticized Henry Miller because he did not take action; he hardly discussed the war in Tropic of Cancer; and, in their opinion, it is his moral obligation as a citizen-writer to address it. However, Miller is defensible only because his “mind is on the peace treaty all the time” (Miller, 143). The silence about the war in the novel suggests a stance of “extreme pacifism,” which is defensible because of his autobiographical honesty about his radical individualism and the artistic intent to describe the beauty of keeping in touch with humanity in spite of eventual annihilation (Orwell, 1 ).
On January 5, 1916 Helen Keller gave the speech Strike Against War, calling for working class people to use the power of the strike to end to America’s involvement in World War I. Keller makes many valid points about the way war affects the working class of America; however, I disagree with how easily she suggests that the working class can rise to action, especially one as drastic as strike. The way that war is used to exploit has not improved since the World War I era.