Use Of Rhetorical Devices In Jfk Speech

Freedom Is Ringing
We are inspired by great speeches because of the way they are rhetorically crafted to make us feel. The best speeches are not the ones that are informational, it’s the ones that tug at our heartstrings. John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, Martin L. King’s I Have a Dream Speech, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms State of the Union Address use a variety of literary devices in their speech to motivate and cajole their audiences to defend our liberties.
In John F. Kennedy’s incentive Inaugural Address speech, he inspires his audience by using rhetorical devices such as antithesis, parallelism and pathos to create unity and expand human rights in his country. The first implement that is introduced in this speech is

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms- and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.”(16) JFK uses parallelism, phrases in the statements that are repeated and identical in structure, in this quote to introduce the idea of justice and liberty between the nations. When he applies parallelism as a rhetorical device, he uses it to build up the thought of what we can accomplish together as a world instead of against each other. He stacks these motivational statements up to catch the audience's attention, in order to fulfill the purpose for his speech which is to create unity. In these five stanzas of parallelism, he confronts the world with an option between war and peace, no matter if they are an enemy or ally. Using unity as an argument he makes the audience question their stance in the world since his strong statement destroys individual nationalism, instead it creates a culturally unified country filled with justice and nationalism on a larger scale. We also see John F. Kennedy using a pathos approach throughout his