On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas, appealing for the support to land humans on the Moon. The president uses an analogy, appeals to patriotism, personification, metaphor, and antithesis in order to effectively convince the audience of the importance of the United States being the first country to make the great advancement that is space travel. To start, President John F. Kennedy uses an analogy to introduce the idea of space travel. His idea is to imagine the past 50,000 years of history condensed into 50 years. He talks about how recent the biggest accomplishments would be and how we could potentially "have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight." This analogy helps the audience to think about all the advances that have been made in the recent years prior to this and how they could be a part of one of the biggest advances of the future by supporting the program. In addition to this, Kennedy appeals to patriotism by saying that "this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them." He is referring to the people that founded this country and how they all wanted to move forward from wherever they came from. By mentioning …show more content…
By saying this, he is talking about the exploration of space as if it is not only an idea, but is very real and even has a mind of its own. This helps to give the audience an idea about space travel that it is an adventure that they should want to be a part of. Kennedy continues to make the argument that the United States should be the first nation to achieve this advancement, or someone else will. This pressures the audience into agreeing with him because it will either be their country or a foreign country that will get to be the first on this