Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech By James Comey

James Comey, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, delivers a speech to the staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at the annual dinner in Washington D.C. Comey is ineffective at conveying a main point throughout his speech, causing his audience to become confused about his purpose. Although he makes several points in his oratory, he is not able to tie it all together for a main focus. By his use of repetitive diction, misleading rhetorical questions, and a lack of pathos, Comey is not able to clearly convey his purpose. In his speech, Comey is constantly repeating phrases in different context leading the audience to associate the same mental image they got from the last time the phrase was used. Comey’s most constantly repeated word is evil. Not only does he say evil by itself many times he is regularly using …show more content…
Before Comey uses rhetorical questions, he is expressing how the Holocaust has always been a horrific event to him and that, “…it has long stood as a stumbling block of faith”. After giving this statement he goes on and asks his audience, “How could such a thing be? How is that consistent with the concept of a loving God?” After giving this background information and these questions the audience would expect most or the rest of the speech to be about how God could let such a horrible event such as the Holocaust happen, but it’s not. In fact, the rest of the speech doesn’t even mention faith or God. Even though rhetorical questions aren’t usually answered, they have some meaning to the passage. The rhetorical questions Comey uses hardly relates to his speech at all. By using rhetorical questions about God and having no further elaboration, the audience is left questioning whether or not Comey’s purpose is to speak about God’s role in the Holocaust or something