Douglas Macarthur: A Well-Known American Hero

Five-star general Douglas Macarthur is a well known American hero for all of his contributions to our past wars. Macarthur was awarded the highest military award, The Congressional Medal of Honor, for his services. He gave his speech “Duty; Honor; Country” to the cadets of West Point Military Academy on his last day as an instructor there on May 12, 1962. Macarthur had graduated from West Point at the top of his class in 1903, so he had a deep emotional connection to all the cadets there. Macarthur opens his speech with a joke to lighten the emotional tension. He had been in service for over sixty years at the time he delivered this speech. He uses long pauses throughout the speech to emphasize important words like “sacrifice”, “moral code”, and “chivalry”. Long pauses make …show more content…
Emphasis on these words makes helps the audience feel an emotional vibe. It also helps the cadets realize what characteristics Macarthur thinks make a good soldier and leader, great. His quote “We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier.”, is another example is literary technique he uses. This helps him exaggerate the point that there are bigger problems that many don’t realize beyond their own. “The shadows are lengthening for me...But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point.”, is a euphemism Macarthur uses for death. He is aware his end days are drawing near, but he doesn’t want to directly say that. He instead used this euphemism to make death sound miniscule compared to the rewards to come. In doing this, it would probably make a young soldier fear death less on the battlefield. Macarthur also alludes to the future space programs in this quote;