Theodore Roosevelt Rhetorical Analysis

Rumors are commonly used by children; however, would you be surprised if leaders also joined in? Rumors are usually about other people’s lives and at times evolve into lies, depending on who tells the gossip. During1890-1920s the progressive era was still going on; the progressive era was a time in which technology, economic development, science, and social organization was introduced and applied to America. In 1901 president Theodore Roosevelt began an anti-corruption campaign known as the progressive reform movement to clean the government from powerfully corrupt leaders. Throughout this campaign rumors and false accusations rose up against honest men. Theodore Roosevelt addresses the false accusations in his speech “Who Smear and Slander …show more content…
For example, “The men of wealth who today are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement” (15). Roosevelt purposely states “the men of wealth” before the word “today”; he could have said “today, the men of wealth,” however instead made the sentence begin with “the men of wealth”. Due to the length of this sentence, Roosevelt intended to make his audience remember who is the sentence about. Roosevelt was able to both allow his audience to remember and give extra emphasis to the beginning of the …show more content…
A metaphor is an implicit analogy, in which one term or thing is given the attributes of another. Roosevelt states “It is because I feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that I ask the war be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution” (14). In this sentence, Roosevelt switches fight with war and the two items that are fighting each other, the muckrakers and him. Using the word “war” and “evil” makes the audience feel like it is a serious issue and must be taken care of at once. Also, when using the word “war”, the audience can picture chaos, hence Roosevelt states on the second part of the sentence “the war be conducted with sanity”. It is ironic that a ‘war be conducted with sanity and resolution’ because wars only bring the worst in people and sometimes there aren’t resolutions. This is another example of how Roosevelt uses good vs evil in his speech. He uses “evil” to evoke the audience emotion, in doing so the audience will look back at their