Rhetorical Summary

On June 26th 2015, nine days after the Charleston Church Shooting that took away the precious lives of nine African-Americans, the United States president Barack Obama gave an incredible remark for pastor Clementa Pinckney that moved the heart of thousands and provoked the controversial conversation of gun violence across the nation. The success of the remark is incalculable, and what drove such success was Obama’s very ability to utilize rhetoric to attack and to build connections. Yet, throughout Obama’s speeches,

The effective rhetorician uses pathos to evoke emotions from the audience. The object then is telic. Through pathos, the rhetor compels the audience to react—or respond—in a particular fashion that is based on feeling and sentiment. Taking the election results as a referent, author Gail Collins becomes the agent who uses her article—Always Look on the Bright Side Finding Good News in the Election Results—as commentary to direct “the audience’s emotional engagement” toward a satirical sense of comfort and relief in spite of the election results (Hauser, 2002, p. 168).

In the speech, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death!”, by Patrick Henry and in the excerpt, “Common Sense”, by Thomas Paine, rhetoric is used thoroughly. During the era of these excerpts, war was a significant matter, so Henry and Paine made these excerpts to enlighten and “boost-up” the people and make them ready for war. Both of the excerpts had the qualities to do so, but “Common Sense” uses more rhetorical devices and is more persuasive due to the language he uses, his ability to relate to the people, and showing the faults in other countries to help us realize that we are a strong country and we need to be ready to fight for it.

did not find amazing when he started talking about the Candidates who run for the presidency and their speeches. They never talk about the privilege whites have but still do not talk about the minorities who do not have the privilege when it comes to health insurance. We never hear them talking about the millions of African Americans who died because they did not have health insurance. But we do hear that millions of African Americans have killed someone or that they were killed by the police. We do not hear that they are being treated unjustly because 80% of whites believe Blacks are treated equally. It was eye opening when Wise starts talking about the possibility of those million blacks surviving if they lived in a white neighborhood. It's

With terror, comes peace and harmony, but not all the time, two speeches are evaluated to determine its effectiveness, [Former] “President Obama’s statement on the Orlando, Florida shooting”, and “President Trump’s remarks on the Las Vegas shooting”. The link which connects the speeches is the rhetorical devices, word choice, tone, persuasive appeals including many others, granting the ability of a stronger claim. The speakers – Former President Barack Obama, and President Donald Trump – incorporate similar ideas and how these ideas had been portrayed throughout their speeches. There are other essential details that fortified their speech, contrariwise there were details that hindered their speech, displaying weaknesses when discussing certain points. The affinity between the two speeches is intricately filled with minutiae – making them harder to spot in comparison to the distinction amongst both. Although, Former President Obama’s speech had plenty of emotionally inducing words, Trump’s speech was more effectively written with informative statements strengthening his speech.

While viewing "Bowling for Columbine" by Michael Moore about gun control he argues that gun violence in America is massive and it can be helped with stricter gun control laws and changes to laws and policies. He builds his argument through the uses of pathos, logos, and explanation of the evidence. Moore used pathos to address his audience directly and appeal to them more emotionally. Throughout the film, he often shows videos, images, or sounds that evoke sympathy from the viewer.

December 14, 2012 was a heartbreaking day for America, as twenty children and six adults lost their lives in a school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. Two days later, President Barack Obama addressed the nation with an interfaith prayer vigil at Newtown High School to help remember those who had lost their lives, and also to convince the nation that changes need to be made. Obama asked America to make an effort to prevent future tragedies such as this one by caring for our children and using our power to help those around us. Through the use of eulogy, appealing to emotions, and structure, the speech attempts to persuade its audience, America, to make an attempt to avoid future tragedies in order to protect our citizens and to help make America a safer place.

Rhetorical questions are a way to demand the reader’s attention and engage the audience without requesting a concrete answer and hypotheticals get the best of us as we ponder the meaning to an already obvious inquiry. Said obvious things are intrinsically more like statements than questions, but Sanders uses rhetorical questions to directly address the reader on their thoughts of ignorant bigotry and the loss of unneeded chauvinistic tendencies. By introducing some reluctantly talked about topics, Sanders is able to open up the reader’s minds to ways they may have not viewed before. Questions such as “Is excessive nationalism necessarily a bad thing?” and “Is there such thing as being too patriotic?” lead the reader to reflect and reevaluate the constitutions of what it means to love one’s country and if they are the ones in the right or the wrong. Rhetorical questions may come off as vapid, shallow level questions, but in reality, rhetorical questions serve more purpose in arousing ideas than the standard preconception of shallow level responses.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting affected the country’s thoughts on school safety in a way that perhaps no other event has. “President Obama wiped away a tear as he spoke in Washington Friday. 'We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years,' he said. 'We are going to have to come together to take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this regardless of the politics.'” (Shock). The people and citizens of this country wanted to be comforted by a trusted government official, so President Barack Obama delivered a speech about gun violence just after the shooting. “‘The only way this time will be different is if the American people demand that this time it must be different, that this time we

The strongest of Obama’s points reside in his use of pathos, or emotional appeal, to connect with his audience. The audience and appeal are blatant from the beginning of the essay to the final word. Americans. Due to the loss of American lives, the emotional charge within the audience is almost palpable. Obama highlights this when he states:

"I'm angry someone would do this to us. There are lives ruined, families ruined, and our whole school year is ruined" (Brackely 1). Casey Brackely, once a student that attended Columbine High School, remembers the tragedy of the horrific Columbine shooting that killed and injured many students. Mass shootings in the United States have been on the rise since the 1980’s, especially in the last decade. These shooters motives and profiles are almost all terrifyingly alike. Many of these shooters try to imitate and parallel the tragic shooting of the Columbine High School in 1999. These shootings have made peaceful organizations, such as an elementary school; become a place of violence and death. Currently, in the United States, an epidemic of

The occurence of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman, was 20-year-old Adam Lana, who first shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. He then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. As first responders arrived, Lana committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. The shooting began at approximately 9:30 a.m. Sandy Hook was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school or grade school in U.S. history and the second-deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. This shooting yet again assured the nation that gun violence is still as big of a problem as it was back in the late 90’s when 27 teenagers got killed in another mass killing in Columbine, Colorado. We as a nation must stand up and oppose mass murdering because these actions are not only unjust but inhuman as well.  The increase in gun violence can be decreased by, identifying the regions in the country where the most gun violence occurs and restricting their access to limiting or monitoring the availability of guns and ammunition.

Unfortunately, the notion of schools being a safe place is no longer a trend across American schools. Disturbing mass shootings in the U.S continue to shock the media. A school shooting is when someone attacks a school using a gun. The Secret Service says these shootings are "deliberately selected as the location for the attack". The reasons massacres occur in schools is because of poor security, violence in video games/media, and bullying. Shockingly the U.S. has the most school shootings than any other country in the world. According to the FBI, mass shootings occur, on average, every 2 weeks in the U.S. While the cause of school shootings are sometimes unpredictable, it is a growing issue and they need to be prevented. Most shooters don’t have mental issues, they have a plan to kill, so there is no singular cause that creates violent people. On April 16th, 2007, the most deadly school massacre occurred. Seung-Hui Cho killed thirty-two students at Virginia-Tech. As Americans, we no longer should turn on the news and witness these gruesome murders. We try to make sense of these murders, but it’s ineffectual. There are measures we can take as a society to help. The number one question in a school massacre is, "why would a person that has a capable sense of mind even do that?” It is our moral responsibility to fix these issues. In order to stop this problem, we need to find its roots.

Over the past couple of decades, school shooting have seemed to occur often-- continuously shocking the nation and reminding everyone that no community is exempt from such horror. One main contributor of this hysteria is found within the media. At the catalyst of this hysteria, lies the horrific Columbine shooting in 1999. Since then, school shootings have received ample coverage-- some argue that this has romanticized school shootings, others argue that is has provided condemning coverage of the often insane perpetrators. In the first year after the Columbine shooting, over 10,000 articles were written about the event, likely setting the stage for the nationwide desire for constant coverage of such events (Elsass et al, p. 445-446).

Throughout the speech, Obama uses pathos to produce an emotion-driven response from America, but more specifically, Arizona State University Class of 2009. For instance, he states, “For many of you, these