Rhetorical Analysis Of Fdr Inaugural Address

In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt was favorably elected into office as the nation's thirty second president. In the midst of the Great Depression with the second world war brewing, the expectations of the American people put a great deal of pressure on President Roosevelt's term. When President Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address came around, many Americans were very eager to hear what sort of plan he had created to solve the country's many hardships. With tens of millions of people listening to President Roosevelt on several different radio networks, he was able to successfully ignite the Americans’ hope for a new thriving nation. Using rhetorical appeals such as pathos, ethos and logos, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to persuade Americans …show more content…
FDR proved to the people that he was not naive by acknowledging many of the country’s serious issues, such as the “host of unemployed citizens (who) face the grim problem of existence” and that “the savings of many years in thousands of families (was now) gone.” Through logos appeals such as this, he was also able to show his audience that he would not forget their issues and that he would focus his attention on the people’s problems because “only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.” Not only was FDR able to show the people that he would focus his attention to the great depression, but he also managed to display his “primary task to put people to work.” In addition, he applied an ethos approach by invoking a sense of shared American moral character through the “old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer”, and described it as a “way to recovery… the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.” By using logical reasoning and facts, along with ethical and emotional appeals, FDR was able to prove to his audience that he would not only focus on the citizen’s main struggles, but that he had a well organized plan in order to do