On September 11th, 2001, Islamic terrorists, Al Qaeda, attacked the World Trade Center in New York City, and the Pentagon building in Washington D.C. Within a couple of hours, the president at the time, George W. Bush, did not hesitate to give a public speech to try to give some closure to the mourning citizens of the United States. Throughout his speech, he uses different rhetorical techniques such as anaphora, imagery, and allusion to accomplish this.
In the opening of his speech, he started it off by using antithesis by referring to the way of life for the American citizens, their very freedom, and ended the sentence with how their freedom was under attack in “A series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.” In the following sentence, he starts to name off the victims, with the following line “Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.” This shows that he is showing sympathy for all of the innocent lives lost. He continued and explained how the victims “Were in airplanes or in the offices, secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers. Moms and Dads, Friends and neighbors.” Bush’s diction was key here, he established pathos by explaining that the victims of 9/11 were friends and family of America, as they were Americans
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In the lines “tonight I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us spoken through the ages in Psalm 23”, Bush uses anaphora by starting each statement off with “I”, this made Bush become on the same level as the families and showed that he is no better off than they are with this whole situation and made them feel