Rhetorical Analysis Of The Gettysburg Address

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In order to describe the tone of the address I would use the words “hopeful mourning” because while Abraham Lincoln pays tribute to the men who have passed, he also describes how their sacrifice has helped our nation move towards freedom. He’s using their death as a propelling force in the war for the people. A great example of this is in paragraph two where it says, “We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.” In his opening sentence Lincoln refers to our forefathers and their coming forth to America in order to establish a new nation. This reference reminds the audience of the very cause our country was founded upon; freedom. Thus alluding to the proposition that all men are equal which creates a parallel structure with what they were fighting for in the civil war taking place at that time. The brevity of the Gettysburg Address is not because it is simple, but because Lincoln carefully chose each word, and each sentence had a purpose. He does this by using antithesis, repetition, and parallelism. Lincoln adequately expresses his purpose through repetition, and he uses antithesis and parallelism to compare and contrast all …show more content…

Some of these include phrases such as “great battle field”/”great civil war”, “so dedicated”/”come to dedicate”, “we cannot”, “we are”, and “to be dedicated”/”to be here dedicated”. The use of the repeated phrases “great battle field”/”great civil war” and “so dedicated”/”come to dedicate” are used for political purposes. The phrases beginning with “we cannot” is Lincoln’s way of starting with the negative first in order to get the audience to agree with him when he brought in the positive phrase “we can”. And finally, “to be dedicated”/”to be here dedicated” is a repetition similar to the first, however this time he uses the phrases of dedication to reiterate his

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