Rhetorical Analysis Obama Speech

Presidential candidate Barack Obama was soon to be the new president of the United States when suddenly his priest Rev. Wright made statements toward racism with white people. The white community was very disturbed by these claims made by Rev. Wright and this tension caught Mr. Obama’s attention very quickly. Barack Obama knew he must iron out this problem because the white vote is the majority vote, without it there is no chance for him to win the election. He knew how important the white vote was; so he quickly crafted a very strategic speech that would ensure the white voters that Obama was worth there vote Obama was very smart to craft a well rounded speech that had plenty of depth and knowledge of the nations past and uses that to help

He knows he must use the most powerful strategies he can in order to pull ahead in the election. In the final few minutes of the speech, he brings out the fact that “we have provided this generation with ladders of opportunity”(Obama paragraph 44). Now of course there are not really ladders in this situation but more of a metaphorical “ladder”. Obama brings this up because it will get the audience to agree with him; getting them both on the same side. He later goes on to add “let us be our brother’s keeper, scripture tells us let us. Let us be our sister’s keeper”. The use of pathos with Obama’s closing statements really wraps up the point he is trying to get across, that we all are united together in this great nation and we must love each other and watch over one another to be truly united. This forces the audience to feel a sense of love and unity among the people around them including Mr. Obama. At this point in the speech the audience is starting to feel less hatred toward Obama and that is exactly what he wanted to achieve by clearing up this racial dispute.

Most people will see this speech as just another speech but Obama carefully crafted this speech to successfully persuade and convince the intended audience that he is still a trustworthy candidate for their vote. Barack Obama was mentally forced to make this speech because if he didn’t make the speech when he did he would have most likely lost in the final election due to the simple fact that without the white majority vote he can’t win the