Barack Obama Speech Rhetorical Devices

Presidential candidate Barack Obama delivered a speech on March 18, 2008 at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. He goes into a detailed speech that talks about racial conflicts that have been brought to light during the 2008 election. Mr. Obama had to work to convince the people that even though he did not agree with his pastor Jeremiah Wright’s comments, they can still be friends. Mr. Obama still going strong, went on to explain that while he cannot control what his pastor said, but went on to enlighten the American people of real problems that we still have in America even though we are called the land of the free. Using many rhetorical devices, Mr. Obama was able to bring more of an importance to the topics he was discussing and how we can fix them together. By …show more content…
Obama goes to bring unity to make everyone realize that we need to be united, and in order to see change we have to work together. He uses parallelism with the sentence “better health care and better schools and better jobs” all things that Americans have been saying they want changed but have not been putting in a true effort to make the change. This structure works because of how he begins the sentence with “binding our particular grievances”, meaning everyone has their own wall that they have to overcome. “The white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling” - how all women, really no color, just females in general having to always struggle to get equal pay. “The immigrant trying to feed his family” this is another common discussion on how immigrants cannot receive the proper treatment to take care of their families. Mr. Obama wanted to put more light to working together by using hyperbole, “larger aspirations of ALL Americans”. Saying “all Americans”, is Mr. Obama trying to show that we are all one at the end of the day. All of us truly just want to live equally and be able to work together to see a better future for ourselves and our families, without separation over controversial