John Quincy Adams Letter Rhetorical Analysis

John Adams being a foreign diplomat upheld the responsibility to travel throughout the world and discuss foreign relations relating to American sovereignty. When under the dominance of such a prestigious family, John Quincy Adams, through the impressment of his mother was sent upon a journey with his father to new lands. In her letter, second First Lady of the United States and wife of John Adams, Abigail Adams elicits that her son John Quincy Adam’s will elaborate upon the virtues he desires through human experience–despite his initial reluctance and imprudence towards it. Adams constructs this elicitation by applying emotional and invoking language with a nuturingly considerate tone, by using figurative language like metaphors to embellish

For example, she concedes that she hopes John Quincy Adams “ had no occasion...to repent [his] second voyage to France” and that “ Nothing is wanting with [him] but attention, diligence, and steady application” in order to comfort her son with ease into the foreground of the diplomatic venture and in order to display that she wishes a creation of nothing but perseverance and admirable aptitude as an effect. In addition, she expels that “ It will be expected of [him]... under the eye of a tender parent” that “ improvements should bear some proportion to [his] advantages” to press the idea that through this experience Quincy Adams will submit to the development of every common man’s goal of modesty and affluence. These examples assist the purpose because not only do they amplify the reasons and outcomes she believes he will gain, but they also envelop her love and care for her son a basis for him

In line 16-19 compares a “ judicious traveler to a river...running rich with veins of minerals, [improving] their qualities as they pass along” in order to create a sense that there is a greater purpose being served in which her son is the traveler absorbing his intellect and power through experience. And in a further line, she asks “ Would Cicero have shone so distinguished an orator if he had not been roused, kindled, and inflamed” through this comparison of grand character’s mishaps and necessary events required in order to erect their elocution in society, she sets forth that it was necessary for him to go in order to become something larger than life. The use of comparisons through metaphors and allusion has the effect of building a strict hindrance that he is expected to come back something greater than before as someone who can lead and possess the qualities of a true