Anaphoras In Obama's Speech

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Former President Barack Obama was known for being a good speaker, but was he actually a good speaker or did was he just a very intelligent man? Public speaking is one of the hardest things to do and Barack Obama does a great job of it. He does have a few tendencies that I picked up on such as hand motion and pauses. Barack Obama gives his speech in Washington D.C. in front of thousands of eager people waiting to hear what the president had planned for the country. Obama was clearly using a teleprompter to help recite his speech, which can be very dangerous as far as communication goes. Teleprompters can have a tendency to cause the speaker to rely on the teleprompter and never look up to the audience. Also speakers can have awkward pauses …show more content…

One of the places that Obama uses anaphoras is when he is talking about the founding fathers of our nation who went and discovered America. He repeats the words “For us” for three consecutive lines. Doing so makes those lines more meaningful because they relate to us personally. Another place that Barack Obama uses anaphoras is when he is describing how he's gonna treat all of the different people in the nation. He repeats the word “To” when he is talking about the muslim religion, the poor people of our nation, and to the leaders of other nations who are out to seek conflict. Obama's use of the anaphoras was effective, but I feel he could’ve used …show more content…

He says “ Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” I think it was smart of Obama to put this in his speech because its very positive for americans to hear that. This section stood out to me because i like the fact that he's not telling the people to panic, he's basically saying stop crying, get up and do something about it. There are a few metaphors that i noticed in his speech. One of the metaphors is he compares the state of the nation to a stormy sea. Usually when i think of a stormy sea the sky is black with lightening, the waves are huge and it's raining hard. Obama was trying to convey to the reader that america is in a time of restoration but he gave us hope that he would get us out of the storm. Another metaphor that obama uses in his speech is he says the path towards prosperity and freedom is a “long rugged path”. The reason obama says this is because he knows that freedom and prosperity don't come very easy. A long rugged path gives me the mental image of rocky path out in the middle of nowhere that people have died on because it's very difficult. I believe this is the image President Obama wanted us to have in our minds showing us that the path to freedom is very tough but just like every challenging path they always have an amazing view once you reach the