Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Thatcher

The power to grant pardons to federal offenses, the power to command the world’s strongest armed forces, and all the privileges of executive power are vested in one man: the President of the United States. The president’s role and influence among American citizens is highly criticized and often underappreciated due to the difficult decisions and sacrifices required in maintaining the greatest nation. However, an external presence, especially one that has led a nation before, is able to comprehend and recognize the multitude of accomplishments despite a handful of shortcomings. Thus Margaret Thatcher, a former British prime minister and close acquaintance to President Ronald Reagan, is able to accurately praise and enlighten the role of Reagan

Throughout the entirety of Thatcher’s eulogy, the speaker’s credibility and the audience’s sympathy for Reagan are proportionally elevated in order to gain the trust of, and make a long lasting impact upon, the audience. Thatcher’s clever anaphora successfully captures the audience’s attention through repetition when describing Reagan as “a great president, a great American, and a great man” (1-2) and once Thatcher hooks her audience’s attention she sincerely includes that she has “lost a dear friend” (2). This is significant due to the fact that Thatcher desires to elicit sympathy for the loss of her friend and the great man that once lead the American people by emphasizing the characteristics of Reagan while simultaneously developing her credibility by revealing the friendship shared between the

Throughout the speech, Thatcher establishes her credibility in understanding Reagan by identifying his accomplishments through the use of parallelism when she describes situations “when his aides”(65) and “when his alles”(68) needed him the most and he was there to provide the necessary leadership. This is significant to the text because Thatcher is able to identify specific evidence of Reagan’s guidance, whether it be to his mere aids or to national allies, that presents a specific insight upon Thatcher’s credibility as Reagan’s close friend and ally. This credibility established trust between the speaker and her audience, and with this developed trust, Thatcher is able to provide insight upon the achievements of Reagan that would not have been appreciated nor noticed, if it weren’t for Thatcher’s personal connection to the former president. Within one of the parallelistic sections in her eulogy, Thatcher utilizes the metaphor, “He transformed a stagnant economy into an engine of opportunity” (34), to emphasize the ingenuity and liveliness that came from Reagan’s actions to improve America. Through this metaphor Thatcher summarizes her knowledge of the economic condition during Reagan’s presidency and the great progressive effect Reagan had on that condition by utilizing the symbolism