The Great Dictator Analysis

In the famous final speech of Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator, released in 1940, it is clear that the speaker put forward an advocacy of democracy and against tyranny. Using Kenneth Burke’s pentad as a means of analyzing this speech allows for better understanding who he places blame on and what he advocates. Moreover, Kenneth Burke’s pentad also aids in understanding the relationships between the five components of the pentad, as well as which one becomes the determinant in every part of the speech, told from the twenty ratios made up with the five components. In this final paper, I would use the model of Burke’s dramatistic pentad to tentatively explore the rhetorical motivation behind Charlie Chaplin’s speech.

The film The Great Dictator tells a story of a Jewish barber, who joins the army during the First World War, and is sent to the hospital because of an injury. Adenoid Hynkel is the dictator of the country, and he has a cruel policy towards Jews. The barber is put into prison and later escapes wearing the army uniform. The soldiers mistake him for

Considering this speech as a part of the film, the agent of the speech is the Jewish barber, who escapes to Osterlich frontier from persecution and is mistaken as Adenoid Hynke the great dictator. If the screenplay of the speech is regarded, however, the agent is Charles Chaplin, a famous actor and filmmaker, who also wrote, produced, scored, directed and starred in the film The Great Dictator.

“Act” is to deliver the address by the agent (Burke). In the film, the barber makes a rousing speech, calling for humanity to break free from dictatorships. And outside the film, reflecting on the tragic consequences of the First World War, Chaplin made an appeal for peace and against war. He also used this film to bring to light the Nazi Germany’s inhumanity and violence, as well as criticize and satirize Hitler’s brutality and