Rhetorical Analysis Of Saving Private Ryan

1007 Words5 Pages

Steven Spielberg’s "Saving Private Ryan" was one of the first movies to show the worst terrors of war in film. Showing scenes in the movie of soldiers screaming for their mothers as they watch their entrails fall out of them. Steven Spielberg choice of the phenomenal cast greatly exhibited the toll of war on man and the nation. Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is what the viewers can describe as an anti-war movie, which can be seen through the extreme violence and drama. Speilberg use of establishing ethos, pathos, logos, and specific camera angles is what really propelled this movie earn all the respect the movie truly deserves. In this case, instead of analyzing the entire movie, the trailer itself emphasizes only certain scenes …show more content…

This scene provides rhetorical devices such as ethos pathos and logos to further strengthen the meaning of this scene in the trailer. The ethos for the trailer wasn’t shown in a way that it established how trustworthy the trailer is, but it also does show a part of the ethos that occurs in the actual movie. "I pray that our Heavenly Father may.....and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." Both examples show Ethos because of the religious reference relating back to the bible showing use that not only is Miller religious but he also want the “Heavenly Father” to take care of the mother and get her through the stage of depression after hearing that she lost all of her sons. The movie itself can also be deemed credible because it was partially based on a true story. It was based on the Niland brothers, four siblings who all served in the US Army during World War II. Three of the four brothers, Robert, Preston, and Edward, were supposedly killed in action, which caused their remaining brother, Fritz (whom the character Private Ryan was based on) to be shipped back to America so that the Niland family wouldn’t lose all of their sons. For the pathos in this trailer, one can just conclude that the whole trailer is involved in pathos because to establish emotion and connect to the audience or in this case the viewers of this trailer the pathos can be the music in the background, the sad expression the General has the video, and the things said in the letter all have the emotional appeal. With the sad background music according to the directors of this movie and trailer, the music can be used to express the feeling of how emotional and traumatizing the effect of after and before the war