Rhetorical Analysis Of Kennedy's Proudest Boast

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It was only supplemented that by the fact that Kennedy had long been known as an effective public speaker. Using the resources he had and his natural speaking ability, he started off with his speech on a high note, “Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum!" Today in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner!"” These words were repurposed through his previous speech in St. Orleans, in which he claimed, “the proudest boast is to say, "I am a citizen of the United States." The two sentences from his Berlin speech summed up the charisma Kennedy carried. These two sentences are collective rhetorical and emotive masterpieces. The comparison of one city, Berlin, to the Roman Empire of old encapsulates the power and emotions he wanted to instill in the people of Berlin. “Ich bin ein Berliner” was something to be proud of, something to be boastful of (even if a Berliner meant ‘jelly doughnut’ to all the German people outside Berlin).

The blatant tendency of Kennedy to refute claims that Communism could be ideal is admirable. His simplification of the problem, and the continuous repetition of this one, …show more content…

The Cold War created a bipolar world of opposing ideals and influences, and Kennedy helped to motivate a paradigm shift in European mentality. The actions that his speech set in motion helped to pull down the Soviet bloc, and start an eventual geopolitical revolution that allowed the dismantling of previous, more primitive ideals (such as those of the League of Nations), and remind the world that change could still occur. Even in the current day, events such as the Scottish referendum and the Ukrainian conflicts show that the populous, like Kennedy, still feel the need to tear down the ‘Wall’ keeping them