By Harold Ickes Harold Ickes, the speaker of this remarkable speech, delivered it during I am an American Day gathering in New York’s Central Park. He was President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of the Interior. It came at a perilous moment in history, May 18 of 1941, When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seemed headed toward a possible world domination. By this time, so many countries have fallen to the Nazis. Many Americans have questioned the wisdom and the necessity of the U.S. involvement in the European War. Pacifist sentiment was steadily growing, while at the same time, Fascism was sometimes referred to as the “wave of the future” by respected Americans. In this speech, Harold Ickes counters that propaganda defines what it means to be
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Harold Ickes is giving a speech on what it means to be an American and what helps him a lot with this speech is the fact that he is an American. The listeners would tend to listen more to what someone is saying if that person is the same ethnicity or even in the same situation. the audience would not listen very much is the speaker was a different ethnicity rather than their own because they would think that the person should not be giving them a speech on their own ethnicity when they are not even that race. Harold Ickes, as an American, chooses to serve his country which adds to is …show more content…
For years we have been told that we are beaten, decayed, and that no part of the world belongs to us any longer.” By saying this he evokes the anger in the American audience because it makes them to wonder if what he is saying really true and how we Americans are seen. He then changes the mood from anger to inspiration and pride when he says, “I say that it is time for the great American people to raise its voice and cry out in mighty triumph what it is to be an American.” When he says that, no one is thinking that they should be ashamed, but instead they start to think that they are proud to be an American. They get inspired to make the right
Harold Ickes is giving a speech on what it means to be an American and what helps him a lot with this speech is the fact that he is an American. The listeners would tend to listen more to what someone is saying if that person is the same ethnicity or even in the same situation. the audience would not listen very much is the speaker was a different ethnicity rather than their own because they would think that the person should not be giving them a speech on their own ethnicity when they are not even that race. Harold Ickes, as an American, chooses to serve his country which adds to is …show more content…
For years we have been told that we are beaten, decayed, and that no part of the world belongs to us any longer.” By saying this he evokes the anger in the American audience because it makes them to wonder if what he is saying really true and how we Americans are seen. He then changes the mood from anger to inspiration and pride when he says, “I say that it is time for the great American people to raise its voice and cry out in mighty triumph what it is to be an American.” When he says that, no one is thinking that they should be ashamed, but instead they start to think that they are proud to be an American. They get inspired to make the right