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Abigail Adams Letter To Her Son Essay

Decent Essays

In the letter Abigail Adams wrote to her son, she touches on a few key points. In this she is trying to bring honor and dignity to her family, but also encourage her son to enjoy and learn whilst abroad in the new world. Adam’s emphasizes the importance of her son’s journey by comparing him to influential men, qualifying him to honor his family with the privilege, he’s been given, and employing the acknowledgement of his challenges to push him forward.
Adams persuades her son into being attentive and becoming more knowledgeable on the expectations she has for him so he will take the trip as more of an opportunity. Stating “Your knowledge of the language must give you greater advantages now than you could possibly have reaped whilst ignorant of it.” This references the privilege she knows he has been …show more content…

She goes about this by challenging him to work diligently at improving, reminding him that his father’s work allowed him the opportunity to be there. “Nor ought it to be ore of the least of your mind, that you have a parent who has taken so large and active a share in this contest, and discharged the trust reposed in him with so much satisfaction as to be honored with the important embassy which at present calls him abroad.” The importance and impact his father trek had echoes through history in that he later became president of the new nation. Not only does she reference his own father Adams talks of another well-known figure from the past. Using a rhetorical question to bring a more poignant point. “Would Cicero have shone so distinguished an orator if he had not been roused, kindled, and inflamed by the tyranny of Catiline, Veires, and Mark Antony?” This allusion to a well-known man who triumphed adds another layer of expectancy to the writing. Ultimately well paired to give urgency to his

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