A Rhetorical Analysis Of Abraham Lincoln's Farewell Speech

Four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln delivers an farewell speech to the brave soldiers who was willing to give away their lives for America. Lincoln’s purpose was to emphasize to the audience about liberty, freedom, and equality within the new nation. He adopts the speech in a solemn and hopeful tone to present to the audience how he felt about the soldiers who commit their lives for America. Through the use of repetition, and parallel structure Lincoln illustrates the importance on the unity of the nation. One of Lincoln’s way to promote unity to the nation was his use of repetition. His use of repetition was illustrated on the first sentence of the second paragraph, where he stated, “we cannot dedicate -- we cannot
consecrate -- we cannot hallow…”, this indicates that his purpose of this speech was to unite the people together since he used the diction, “we” instead of “you” or “I”. With the use of repetition,it also indicates that he emphasizes the address in a emotional tone, since it sounded as if he was being genuinely serious about uniting the nation together. Another rhetorical strategy, Lincoln used was parallel structure, and he used parallel structure to improve the flow of the speech, which helped the audience focus on what he’s saying. The use of parallelism was demonstrated on the middle of the second paragraph, where he said, “ It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not die in vain…” this illustrates the use of dashes which made the sentence much more smoother.