A Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher's Eulogy Of Ronald Reagan

The passing of who was once Ronald Reagan was one that affected not only the United States, but also the world. It was a loss we all felt, but it was felt more by those close to him. Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain was one who's Reagan's death affected at a more personal level. During her eulogy she's described him as a great president, American and friend with the usage of rhetorical strategies such as anaphora, repetition, comparison, parallelism, her usage of pathos and ethos and the strong personalizing, to describe him and pay her respect to him.

Ronald Reagan, while many things, one of his biggest accomplishments is his long presidency. Thatcher in her eulogy used repetition, comparison and emphasis on his

During her eulogy, she discusses his effort against Russia throughout his presidency, and the victory against them is one of Reagan's greatest accomplishments. She creates a picture of a comparison between Reagan, who is presented as the hero and Russia as the villain. It is clear that Thatcher sees Reagan as a great leader of our country, she paints him as a powerful leader who defeated a threat towards us and showed great skills to be able to rule and lead our country. Thatcher repeatedly mentions Russia throughout her eulogy, when talking about them, she uses words such as "enemies" "evil empire" "weaknesses" "failures" and "communism" a drastic contrast from the words she used for him such as " freshness" "a man of good" "sincere." The contrast alludes to the idea that Reagan was the good guy, who defeated the evils of Russia, a proud success of his presidency. This is a comparison she regularly uses throughout her eulogy. Thatcher alludes to the idea of Reagan being a great president in lines 30-39. Thatcher uses anaprophy by repeating the word "Others.." for example "Others prophesied..." "Others saw..." and "Others hoped..." This helped emphasizes all the work he did, work

It is evident that throughout her speech, Thatcher makes a point to personalize both their relationship and himself to provide us with insight to their depth of their friendship. During her eulogy, Thatcher shifts from referring to Reagan as "Ronald Reagan," his full name to then refer to him as "Ronnie." The contrast to the usage of his name provides the audience/reader with contextualization on their depth of their friendship. The usage of nickname implies how much she deeply cared for him and viewed him as a close personal friend, not just someone she remotely associated. Since nicknames are something we only do with our close friends, her switching calling him by a nickname we can only assume she used regularly with him, shows how close of friends, they were. Thatcher also makes a point to discuss the longitude of her friendship with Reagan, by pointing how she "worked closely with Ronald Reagan for eight of the most important years of their life." While she could have simply stated she knew him for a long time, she takes the time to mention a specific number. This allows the audience to further sympathize with her, but get a better picture on how they were more that just acquaintances, but that they were there for each other through all the ups and downs for almost a decade, how much of their life they spend next to each other. This allows the audience to identify their deep