Rhetorical Analysis Of Harvey Milk's The Trial And Death Of Socrates

In all circumstances, there is an audience - be it a packed auditorium, with people pushing to sit close to the front of the room, spell bound by every word escaping the speakers lips, or a quiet setting, where the only audience is the individual, speaking to himself. Regardless of the size or location, words are impactful to whomever they’re delivered. Admired are the individuals who realize a moment to persuade and seize it readily. Harvey Milk is one such individual. Milk’s role as a rhetorician can be likened to that of Socrates in Plato’s The Trial and Death of Socrates, and his speech works to address his historically situated audience, the San Francisco City citizens and government, and their largely anti-gay mentality, through …show more content…
Hope is central to Milk’s speech, though his irritation towards government establishments, and his incitement of righteous anger against the injustice his people have faced is prominent, his overarching message to intended audience of the entire city, is one of hope and peace. Not only does Milk encourage his audience to feel hope, but he encourages them to be the catalysts of hope in their community. He says, “YOU have to give them hope.” (Milk). With this call to action, he says that the “gays, the blacks, the seniors, the poor… the USes give up” (Milk) if the people do not inspire hope in their community. Milk is calling his audience to be the change in their own community – to not allow the wicked “them” to succeed in overtaking the community with their own desires. Fredrick Douglass, in “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”, encourages his audience to fight against similar injustices, calling for “the feeling of the nation [to] be quickened; the conscience of the nation [to] be roused… the hypocrisy of the nation [to] be exposed…” (Douglass 11). Douglass leaves his audience with a message of hope for America in finishing his speech, as Milk does for his own audience. Through the entirety of their speeches, they both encourage their listeners to be the change in their respective communities and worlds, to fight against the “them” establishments, and unite as the ‘us’ that is fighting towards victory and righteousness, good and not evil. Milk and Douglass build their own prestige with their respective audiences by calls to action, personal involvement with the cares and concerns of the people, righteous anger, and encouraging hopefulness in the hearts of their