George W. Baker's Rhetorical Analysis: The Last Letter

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“The Last Letter” The strategies used by Tomas Young to draw the attention of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were pathos in connection to sadness, parallelism to grab the reader’s attention, rhetorical questions for the President, and the use of anaphora “I write this letter [...]”. These strategies together were used to show the major issue of the ignored and fallen soldiers of the Iraq War, even after 10 years when Young wrote this letter.
The use of pathos is intended to cause a sense of sadness and betrayal in the reader, betrayal of the soldiers that fought for the country and seemingly are treated like yesterday’s garbage. Explicit depictions of what happened to the soldiers that came home are purposed to cause pain in the reader’s heart, even in the first paragraph the author points out what happened to him specifically, “I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.” This instance is upsetting to the average reader, and to anyone who has a family member or friend with the same issue. The example of husbands and wives losing their spouses, and children losing their parent or parents, “I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries.” The soldier Tomas Young uses this example to draw out the utter pain of loss the families affected by this war feel, to guilt the President and Vice President for sending these people out be used and abused in the field, and then getting forgotten at their home country as soon as the fight is over. The pointing out of the President’s and Vice President’s faults is meant to stir an anger in the reader. The example of draft dodging presented in Cheney and pointing out Bush leaving his assigned National Guard unit forces the reader to think about their treatment of soldiers, if they weren’t even willing to stay themselves. The use of parallelism in the fourth paragraph specifically pounds in the seemingly unlimited resources used by the President
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“Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character.” This quote can prove what the soldier, and most likely many others, were thinking when they arrived home with their physical and mental issues, and were simply what seemed tossed to the curb while no help comes to …show more content…
This constant repetition keeps the reader’s attention on the point at hand; the consistent need for attention holds the audience for as long as he uses it. The first paragraph gets the audience to listen, and the usage of “I write this letter” and in the following paragraphs with different continuations behind it wills the reader to keep reading, to keep understanding the point the author is trying to make. “I write this letter on behalf” and “I did not join the Army”, are both the usages of repetition to keep the reader to the

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