Coach Boone Gettysburg Speech Analysis

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Gettysburg Speech In 2000 at Gettysburg, Coach Herman Boone presented his football team with a heartwarming, pathos speech about a historical war event to cause his players to fathom the importance of acting as a team. Coach Boone’s Gettysburg speech was a mesmeric allusion to President Lincoln’s famous dedication, and provoked a comparison between one of the hardest fought battles of the civil war and the need for teamwork. His morning practice speech is meant to inspire by arousing images, to appeal to their emotions, on the consecrated field of one of the most difficult times in American History. “Anybody know what this place is?” (American Rhetoric). He begins with a question in order to get the boys thinking on the right track. Coach …show more content…

Coach Boone began his speech with information his audience needed to know, “fifty thousand men died right here on this field, fightin’ the same fight that we're still fightin’ amongst ourselves today” (American Rhetoric). Coach Boone’s football team knew about the Gettysburg battle, but never connected it to a football game, knowing this came from how the boys reacted to the speech. Each boy on the team came to the realization that they were in the wrong, by Coach’s passionate appeal; which is what he was aiming for. Coach Boone used a pathos to appeal to his team’s emotion. “This green field right here was painted red, bubblin' with the blood of young boys, smoke and hot lead pourin' right through their bodies” (American Rhetoric). The blood of the young men was once all over that which they stood. Pathos would have stood out more, if Coach Boone would have used repetition when explaining how bloody the war was. Coach Herman Boone was presenting a patho speech to his football team after a huge fight between the boys. He used the civil war, along with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches to explain to the boys how much a team must be one not