As the melody of the national anthem fills the stadium on a Sunday night, the fans once there to support the NFL, neglect the game entirely, as they eagerly await the decisions of the players to either kneel or stand while the anthem plays. Sparked by the initial protest made by Colin Kaepernick, multiple players have “taken a knee” during the national anthem as a means of peaceful protest. Through her open letter addressed to the NFL, Taya Kyle utilizes repetition, rhetorical questioning, and a brief narrative in order to convey how the NFL and the protests have divided America. Throughout her letter, Kyle frequently employs repetition as means of stressing the responsibility the NFL and football had in America. She also describes the repercussions of the NFL neglecting its responsibilities and how America has suffered as a result. According the Kyle, the importance of the NFL in society was to keep the country unified as it brought “different backgrounds, talents, political beliefs and histories as one big team with one big goal..”. As a means of describing this unity that the NFL created, Kyle frequently utilizes the phrases “we”,“together” ,and “team” , to enforce the idea that the NFL wasn’t a discriminatory institution, by any means, and was one of the few places where all members of the country could come together. Through this, Kyle establishes that …show more content…
All of a sudden the once inclusive NFL that was helping to create an “ideal world”, was an unrecognizable “polar opposite”. In order to depict this transition, Kyle utilizes rhetorical questioning to demonstrate the unwinding of America. Questions such as,“ Will we stand with you? Will we stand with our flag?What does it mean?What does it mean if we buy a tick or NFL gear?”, demonstrates the questions the people of America began to ask themselves and signifies the divide of the American