A Rhetorical Analysis Of Tomas Young's The Last Letter

In light of the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war, Tomas Young, a former veteran on hospice writes “The Last Letter” (2013). In Young’s letter, he elucidates that the war was anything but necessary. He asserts that the lives of veterans, the family of those veterans, and even those in Iraq and America, will be spent in “unending pain and grief.” His purpose in persuading the audience, in this case George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, to change perspective of the war, its many deaths, and disappointments, to call out their reasons for initiating the war and to call out the injustice of what the Iraq war has done to millions of people, is successfully achieved in Young’s letter with the use of a tremendous amount of figurative language and appeals

Plus, the use of this technique makes it more pleasurable for the audience and makes a lasting impact on them as they read throughout the entirety of the letter. “I write this letter on behalf…” repeated multiple times blatantly exhibits to the reader that there are obviously more than one causes for him writing this letter that is not only important to him, but important for his purpose. After every “I write this letter on behalf…” he adds a heartbreaking reason that holds a deeper meaning that keeps his point right in the audience’s face. At the ending of the letter, Tomas adds one more piece of anaphora/repetition that not only hits Bush and Cheney in their hearts, but also hits anyone who reads his letter in their heart. “We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned.” Him adding we adds an even more personal aspect to an already personal letter. This lets the audience know that he is not the only one feeling this way, that this letter is not written as a hate letter or a vindictive letter, but a letter to show that millions are hurt, he included, and will continue to be hurt unless the intended audience changes their