Public opinion is a driving force in society. It influences every action and aspect of our lives from laws, stereotypes, and people’s roles in society, but these opinions can sometimes be extremely harmful and force people into silence. In First Lady Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson’s tribute to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at the first-anniversary luncheon of the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Foundation in 1964, she inspires her audience, especially the women in the crowd, to speak out against the wrongs of society using a recurring theme of women’s empowerment, allusions to the empowering words of others, and Roosevelt’s example. Roosevelt was a role model for thousands and a revered public figure, but behind her idol persona, Johnson …show more content…
Johnson regards the word silence in negative connotations as she says, “She [Roosevelt] would have taken the greatest risk of all if she had remained silent in the presence of wrong.” She repeats the same sentiment when she quotes a Jewish rabbi during the time of the Holocaust, “ The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem— is silence,” and once more when she states that “silence is the greatest sin.” Her pairing of the word “silence” with words such as risk, shameful, disgraceful, tragic, and sin, strongly signifies that the worst thing to do is not to say anything at all whilst invoking guilt and creating a call to action by demonstrating the effect of no action. This message is especially prevalent to women who were not allowed a voice during the …show more content…
By directly addressing the audience, Johnson creates a connection and directly calls the audience to action by invoking a fire within them. Johnson further inspires by using parallelism, saying, “She saw an unemployed father, and so she helped him. She saw a neglected Negro child, and so she educated him. She saw dictators hurling the world into war, and so she worked unflinchingly for peace.” The repeated grammatical structure emphasized the contextual difference between each example. It started minutely with helping a single person find a job, then continued to snowball to helping the entire world find peace, proving the domino effect of one’s actions and how simple it can be to make an
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Wiesel) This shows that if you stay quiet and let it happen just as the world did with the holocaust then you are no better than the people who are doing it. Firstly, Elie's speech called the perils of Indifference illustrates that seeing someone in need and not helping them is a crime against humanity.
Throughout this speech, Florence Kelley addresses The Philadelphia Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1905, to bring attention to the working conditions of young children across the nation. Kelley’s rhetorical strategies are, listing examples of the appalling working conditions in a repetitive manner and appealing to ethos and pathos to persuade her audience. Kelley creates a compelling argument that captures the audience and throws them into the issue and then persuading them to join her battle. Kelley forms strong personal and emotional statements that strikes the hearts of the audience. She captures the hearts of the mothers and fathers in the audience and then encourages them to empathize with victims.
The Holocaust was a dark time in human history. People were persecuting others and treating them like animals. In the novel, Night, by Elie Wiesel, a boy named Elie and his father are taken to Auschwitz and subjected to the horrors that take place there. Wiesel claims that silence and neutrality are the greatest sins because they cause the victims to become despondent, they allow the oppressors to continue their crimes, and neutrality causes the prisoners to lose emotion. Neutrality and silence cause the victims of the Holocaust to become vulnerable because they stop showing compassion towards others and become hardened.
When Eleanor Roosevelt was known as the First Lady it drastically changed her life as a woman. “She took a leading activist role; she addressed the needs of woman, children, laborers, and the minority groups” (Source 2, Para. 11). After her husband’s polio attack she started to help him with his political career as president. Eleanor showed the world that being a first lady doesn’t mean you have to be in the darkness, it means that you have to stand up for what you believe. In having an activist role in society and having the role as First Lady, she was the first person to
In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he shows his experiences in the horrors of the Holocaust and how it erodes anyone who lives to tell its tale. He expresses all the torture and hardships they had to endure all while not expressing any thoughts of their own relating to the situations. Night brings to light the personification and unembellished usage of silence throughout Wiesel’s experiences in the Holocaust within the box cars, his enmity towards God, the disparity of the Buna factory, the run that determined life or death, his father's death, and Buchenwald. Night discusses several forms in which silence is abundant and more valuable than words spoken. In numerous instances, silence is seen in quantities unable to be calculated; this however
Voices of the Lost In the memoir Night, Elie Wiesel reflects on the detrimental effects the Holocaust had on society as well as expresses the power of speaking out. In his Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, he states, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (Wiesel). Wiesel stresses the idea that the weight of our voices speaks volumes. Many others, too, share this philosophy and emphasize the significance of honoring victims of the Holocaust and never letting them go forgotten.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Wiesel's words remind us that sometimes we must interfere. As a
And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation” (1). He found the world's silence unacceptable, because it demonstrates that they had forgotten the people that
Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 speech “The American Promise” is a powerful, emotive address to the nation that declared the United States' commitment to ending poverty and racial injustice. In this speech, Johnson paints a vivid picture of the progress and potential of America, and issues a passionate plea for the nation to embrace its collective promise to protect and advance the rights of all Americans. Johnson's speech is an example of powerful rhetoric, as he uses a range of persuasive devices to appeal to the nation's sense of morality and justice such as connotative diction and allusions. In his speech, "The American Promise," Lyndon B. Johnson used connotative diction to evoke an emotional response from his audience.
Johnson uses an infinite number rhetorical devices. He uses repetition, allusions, and appeals to authority, just to name a few. An example of repetition is “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem.
The world has developed in many areas such as in gender, sexual, and racial rights. Shirley Chisholm stands as one of these individuals in history that has paved a path to equality. Her Presidential bid, delivered on January 25, 1972, is one moment cemented in history. This paper will analyze that speech by examining her pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos is Greek for an appeal of emotion.
Eleanor Roosevelt, with her informal speech, the Adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights (1948), explains her opinion on the importance of the declaration and how we need to treat freedom has a right not a privilege. Eleanor supports her speech by using euphemism, apostrophe, and anadiplosis. Eleanor's purpose for the speech is to address the United Nations about human rights and its importance in the world. She formally addresses this speech to the United Nations, World War II victims, and all victims in the world. Eleanor was born October 11, 1884 has Anna Eleanor Roosevelt in New York, New York.
Clinton attempts to use propaganda, empathy, and logic to present her point, that women to her audience, and succeeds at it. Overall, the speech is balanced in its argument style and use of rhetoric, such as the factors mentioned above. At this point, Clinton was not a New York senator yet, but only First Lady, yet she used her position to go to conferences, such as this conference, and speak out for women’s rights, as they are the same as human
In the 1972 announcement of candidacy by Shirley Chisholms, the politician made the rhetorical choices of repetition, diction, and using past experiences along with relevant individuals to convey her message that America must be united to succeed. Shirley Chisholms starts her announcement by developing logos through the use of repetition and states that she is “ …not the candidate of any political policies or fatcats or special interests”, “…not the candidate of black America…” and “…not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country…”, but rather ”…the candidate of the people of America.” Through her use of repetition, she assures her audience that she is not concerned with what seem to be her particular best interests as a black woman and politician, but that she is concerned over including all of the American’s best interests, separated from gender, race, and status.
Johnson uses controlled outward behavior, relaxed facial expressions, and drawn-out pauses following important words in order to capture the audience’s attention and to adequately get his point across. President Lyndon Baines Johnson sustaining a confident posture thought his speech shows he is confident in the message conveyed in his speech and the severity of the subject matter. Through the punctuation of important statements such as “it demand an end to poverty, and racial injustice...” and “poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty,” (“LBJ’s”) President Johnson pauses to give the American audience time to reflect on what he is saying and allowing the audience to reflect on his compelling words.