The Gettysburg Address

800 Words2 Pages

How can a speech gain complete resonance, or agreement from its audience in a short amount of time? Abraham Lincoln's most famous speech was a great example for gaining the audience's spirits. ''The Gettysburg Address'' was given on November 19, 1863, after the Union won the Battle of Gettysburg. In the speech, Lincoln emphasized the importance and necessity of the Civil War, which was, in his point of view, still worth fighting, despite the horrors of the war. Lincoln did not only argue for his point straightforwardly and list several reasons to support it, but also skillfully apply to audience's rising patriot emotion along with the speech. At the end os the speech, Lincoln successfully gave his audience the passion to keep on fighting the Civil War. By building up his audience's loyal and intensity feelings as well as the speech's climax at the same time, Lincoln's strong argument and expression let people realize and remember what was worth them to fight, the Union. By fully gaining people's minds and attention, Lincoln heartened his audience, touched their deep emotion, and won his audience's resonances with him and his idea that this war is still worth fighting. Lincoln's conquering of his audience's mentality starts at the very beginning of the speech, where he started with an allusion to build up the base of the emotion for the entire speech, the seriousness. ''All men are created equal.'' (35) The phrase from the Declaration of Independence prepares the audience for what is coming next. The Declaration of Independence is not for entertaining; the topic of the speech must be heavy and serious. Starting with a strong phrase grabs the audience's attention instantly. Also, for setting up the mood of the speech, Lincoln i... ... middle of paper ... ... saving the Union. The use of parallelism was powerful especially when the speech was read out loud. The excitement in the words would shape and add to the audience's aggressive emotion and drive it to a climax. As both of the speech and the audience's emotion reach the climax, Lincoln already succeed in winning the resonance from the audience on his argument. If Lincoln just plainly address his argument of continue fighting the war without any emotion changes in his audience, the audience would not be effected so fully by his speech. Lincoln ''played'' with his audience's emotion in order to make the audience mentally agree and support Lincoln's argument from within. Despite weather the aggressive emotion was on a whim or not, Lincoln did success, at least at that moment, arguing that the Civil War is still worth fighting by controlling the audience's emotion.

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