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Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech

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Lou Gehrig delivers an emotionally-charged, heart-wrenching farewell to his loving fans, colleagues and family, while reflecting and emphasizing how blessed he has been, despite the unfortunate turn of events. While his diction is less than sophisticated, Lou makes up the loss through his down through a strong concession refutation, a structure that makes up the entirety of his speech. This is initiated from very beginning, in the exordium when Gehrig states, "Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." In the first sentence, Gehrig addresses the elephant the room, (his doom due to the degenerative disease ALS, ironic due to the fact the disease attacked the very thing that made him exceptional, his athleticism) but reassures the audience by refuting this point with the fact he believes he is the luckiest man on earth, a point he goes on to defend for the remainder of his speech. He finishes the speech a final reiteration of his concession refutation to maximize the impact of his speech, "... I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for." The appeal that Gehrig tries to evoke throughout his oration, and does with considerable success, is pathos. Gehrig, with a tone of incredible gratitude, begins to speak about the fans, how grateful he is been for their support and that they are all "grand fellows" . Then using the technique of apostrophe to single out individuals in the …show more content…

He gave the fans and those around him a form of closure through this speech, and let them knew he had accepted his fate, and in the end was proud of what they had achieved

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Despite his recent diagnosis with ALS, a neurological disorder with no cure, Lou Gehrig is able to maintain a positive and inspirational tone through his use of positive diction in order to stop his fans from pitying him because he still has so much to live for. Gehrig uses many words with a positive connotation, which help create his positive tone. When describing his encounters with “these grand men,” Gehrig uses phrases such as “the highlight of his career” and “honor” to show how lucky he has been. These phrases emphasize his wonderful experiences meeting such famous figures and help him prove, to the audience, that he has lived an incredible life, which he uses to deflect pity from the audience. Gehrig’s word choice has a large impact

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Lou Gehrig was an American baseball player who played for the MLB team the New York Yankees. He was a first baseman and excellent batter who rose from the ranks of poverty to be one of the greatest baseball players ever known. Lou was raised by a family of immigrants and played football and baseball in high school through college, impressing scouts by striking out a total of 17 batters. He set the record for consecutive games played with 2,130 and got the nickname the iron horse for his resilience for his hardworking nature and playing through even the worst of pains. His career finally ended in 1939 when he was diagnosed with ALS (Aldrich).

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Lou Gehrig, a professional baseball player who spent his whole career with the New York Yankees from 1923 through 1939, playing 17 seasons. During his career, Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS, a condition that would end his career and cause him to lose control of his muscles. In 1939, Lou Gehrig's gave a speech to his fans regarding his illness and retirement. His speech quickly gained recognition and influenced the famous “Ice Bucket Challenge” that gained popularity all around the world, allowing for over $115 million to be raised for an ALS movement. Gehrig used repetition in his address to emphasize how fortunate he was to spend a happy and fulfilled life despite his conditio For instance, during this speech, Lou Gehrig constantly used rhetorical questions such as "Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert?" and even "To have spent six years with that great little fellow, Miller Huggins?"

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One of the most important rhetorical devices in Lou Gehrig ’s Farewell Address is ethos. Ethos is the attributes and credibility of the speaker. Lou Gehrig was a beloved and famous baseball player for the New York Yankees. Lou Gehrig was the only son of two hardworking German immigrants.

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Speech Essay Explosion, bombs, outbreaks are both talked about in Ronald Reagan’s and Franklin D. Roosevelt's memorable speeches. Reagan was our 40th U.S. president and he said the “Shuttle ‘Challenger’ DIsaster” speech. Roosevelt our 32nd U.S. president which said the “Pearl harbor address to the nation” speech. They take pride in what they do and try to remember and live past at tragic times.

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On March 15, 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to urge the passage of the Voting Rights Act and outlined his plans for supporting voting rights. In his speech, Johnson not only advocated policy, he borrowed the language of the civil rights movement, and he represents a key moment in the civil rights movement as well as a culturally significant speech in American letters and he tied the movement to American history. This message was addressed to the presidency and the members of the congress.

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Even after he died, he remained an icon in baseball and the whole sports industry. Many young adolescents and even grown adults look at athletes as role models or heroes. Even though some athletes make questionable decisions, people still look up or even follow in the footsteps of the athlete because of their prowess at the sport he/she plays professionally. However, Anthony Smith wrote “For people who turn to athletes as examples of perseverance or strength, I don’t think there is a better example than Gehrig.” With his difficult childhood growing up with a drunk and a mother who worked multiple jobs and his diagnosis with ALS at an early age, Anthony Smith believes that Gehrig is one of the finest role models in the athletic world.

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Address is its inaugurating document, it is not a tradition separate from liberty, but simply the means of defending the first tradition. Moreover, one of McDougall’s main purposes throughout is to show that unilateralism was not isolationism, which in fact never existed. “Our vaunted tradition of ‘isolationism,’” he states, “is no tradition at all, but a dirty word that interventionists, especially since Pearl Harbor, hurl at anyone who questions their policies” (p. 40). That the term functions as a smear (and a proven method of forestalling debate) is true enough. But it is hard to see how Washington’s doctrine can be equated with McDougall’s unilateralism.

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Instead he told his story about being lucky. Be great fun for knowing so many great people and players. Thankful he got to suit up so many times to play he game of baseball. When reading about Gehrig before reading his speech, I found out that he retired because of a disease that was crippling and is now named after him. That is why in his farewell speech he did not want pity, which in my opinion shows great character.

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His inability to move on highlights the lasting impact of loss and the profound effect it has on one's life

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His social impact was seen the most at the end of his career when he delivered a speech, changing the lives of everyone at the ballpark that day. Gehrig appeals to pathos, ethos and uses repetition in order to thank the fans and convince the public that he is not to be pitied. Gehrig uses pathos as a way to connect emotionally with his audience in order to create a sympathetic mood. Gehrig uses pathos very early in the speech when he tells the audience to

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848 Words | 4 Pages

The author Tennessee Williams has written make works of literature however there is one play in particular that is full of symbolism. A Streetcar Named Desire is a play about the interactions of two sisters, Stella and Blanche, and Stella’s husband Stanley. Theses characters go through many ups and downs while living with each other and experience terrifying and wonderful things. The author Tennessee Williams uses a lot of symbolism when it comes to light and darkness.

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Different resources added to the enthusiastic offer of Gehrig's speech he was at last tending to the reason behind why he was resigning from baseball. His reason was the sickness known as ALS; sensory system ailment. Gehrig at long last showed through this discourse that fighting this sickness would have been the hardest fight yet and it would keep him from proceeding with his baseball vocation. “Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.

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548 Words | 3 Pages

In fact, the first word in Gehrig’s speech is “Fans.” He immediately directly addresses the fans and by doing this, he is unselfishly noting that this speech is for them, the people who had always been there for him. Already, Gehrig had established the setting for his speech; although on the surface, was a retirement speech, it immediately became a speech about being grateful and giving thanks to the people who got him to where he was. Furthermore, by his first word as an address to the fans, Gehrig abolishes the hierarchical

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1032 Words | 5 Pages

In this heartfelt speech, Lou Gehrig expresses his gratitude for all of the positive things that have occured in his life, despite his recent diagnosis of ALS, in order to convey that he is still lucky even though he is now unable to play baseball. Of course the speaker of this speech is Lou Gehrig, who begins by addressing his fans because he wants to start by thanking them all for the good they have put into his life. He states his argument right away by saying that he

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