Past Thoughts And Prayers Rhetorical Analysis

Political strategist, Reed Galen, in his article, We’re Past Thoughts and Prayers, clarifies the importance of past tragedies and to always remember those horrific events and lives lost during them. Galen’s purpose is to inform people so they do not forget, but remember these massacres. He adopts a contemplative tone in order to get the people reading this article to feel some sort of sorrow, and also want them to make a difference. In order to portray his feelings and thoughts, he uses many rhetorical devices throughout the article. To begin with, Galen’s first paragraph states facts about the past and most recent massacres saying estimates about each massacre and numbering the probable amount of people that were there. In order to show the facts, he uses logos by getting statistics about how many people there were there, was hurt, and died. For example, in the sentence “that a single individual attacking a crowd of 20,000 people and killing or wounding more than 600 is considered just another tragedy…” This sentence is a good example of the author’s use of logos because he mentions how many people are usually at an event like this and that’s what he wants us to know that these acts of terrorism are just becoming regular things …show more content…
A rhetorical device used in these paragraphs would be rhetorical questions however, there are more but this is more often used throughout these paragraphs. An example of a rhetorical question would be when he states sentences such as “is their teenager safe on campus?” “is it safe to go to the movies?” questions like that, that you are not able to answer. He uses these questions to emphasize the thoughts that are in people’s heads after every attack that has happened since those parents don’t know what can