Rhetorical Analysis Of Fdr's Speech To Congress

Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a speech to congress on December 8, 1941 after a devastating tragedy and treachery of the Japanese empire that happened at pearl harbor one of Hawaii’s naval bases. Franklin accused the Japanese of bombing pearl harbor and killing many us civilians and he wants congress to approve of and fund him on declaring war on the axis power. This speech uses ethical and emotional appeals to convince congress to declare war on the axis power and fund the cause with military action. Franklin D. Roosevelt starts off the speech in a form of writing that makes the United States sound like the victim here. Making it seem like they didn’t do anything which is true they had diplomatic negotiations of peace and a sudden change made the Japanese attack first because they thought the United States was going to attack first. So by him using this type of writing he used emotional appeal which is pathos. He said that it was obvious that japan attacked the U.S. and many other island nations in the pacific while the Japanese ambassador sent a reply to the U.S. saying that they should obviously not continue relations but it contained no declaration of war. Saying this it was kind of confusing why japan attacked the U.S. but still

He wanted to give the news straight out because it was being broadcasted to more than 81 % of American Homes. Most of the people agreed that it was a good idea to declare war on japan but they didn’t realize how much death this war was going to create. But all the people wanted was revenge so by Franklin using these types of appeal it created a speech that was supposed to be convincing congress to declare war by stating the facts and giving them the emotion of making them remember the first fallen soldiers from the United