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Michael Appel

ENG 1101-01

Prof. Lahmon

24 October 2019

A Whisper of AIDS

AIDS can be a scary disease and some people may be ashamed to talk about it,

but on August 19th, 1992, Mary Fisher gave a speech at the Republican National

Convention to raise awareness for HIV and AIDS. Mary’s speech wasn't intended to

scare people of HIV and AIDS, but to embrace and become more aware of the disease.

She wanted people to stop shunning and ignoring the disease and start to become

proactive and help find treatments and cures for it. She gave her speech to other

political leaders because they are the ones that can “lift the shroud of silence which has

been draped over the issue of HIV and AIDS”. Mary’s first-hand accountability, use of

logos, and ethos are what drive this speech to be very effective and successfully get a

point across.

Mary Fisher is HIV positive and her first-hand account with HIV helps drive her

speech. There is a more personal and touching tone in her speech because of how

personal this issue is to her. However, she tries not to make this speech about herself.

One of the only things she says about herself is, “I want my children to know that their

mother was not a victim. She was a messenger”. Mary uses her own experience with

HIV to promote its awareness within her speech because she knows what it is like to

have the disease. She knows how little people want to talk about it and that is why she

is giving the speech. Mary stated her credibility very early on in this speech by stating, “I
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would never have asked to be HIV positive, but I believe that in all things there is a

purpose”, and by her saying this the audience immediately respects her and feels like

she has the authority to speak about this topic.

In addition to the use of pathos, Mary Fisher does a great job of using facts and

statistics to back up her claim. She uses logos to help solidify in the minds of her

audience of how big of a problem HIV has become. One stat she mentioned was, “Two

hundred thousand Americans are dead or dying. A million more are infected.

Worldwide, forty million, sixty million, or a hundred million infections will be counted in

the coming few years”. She also states that “AIDS is the third leading killer of young

adult Americans today”. These facts open up the eyes of her audience and it truly

shows them how big of an issue AIDS and HIV has become. Without these facts, her

speech would be much weaker as she would not have anything to persuade her

audience with other than her heart and feelings.

Along with all the statistics, Mary makes the claim, “We have killed each other

with our ignorance, our prejudice, and our silence”. This quote moves the audience and

forces them to look back on all the times that they have ignored or avoided conversation

about AIDS and now see the results of those actions. They might see friends or family

members that they have lost because of AIDS and now they want to listen more and try

to follow what Mary is saying. These facts and logical statements are very persuasive

and help Mary’s speech become effective.

Above all, Mary’s use of ethos has the biggest impact on making her speech

great. She relates all the facts to real-life situations and puts a face with all the numbers.

By doing this it forces the audience to look past the numbers and see their friends and
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family members suffering. Mary relates herself to others by saying. “Though I am white

and a mother, I am one with a black infant struggling with tubes in a Philadelphia

hospital. Though I am female and contracted this disease in marriage and enjoy the

warm support of my family, I am one with the lonely gay man sheltering a flickering

candle from the cold wind of his family’s rejection”. This enabled her to relate with

everyone in the audience because now she is showing how they are all the same and

they are all suffering from a terrible disease. There is no one type of person that is

suffering more and that is how Mary connects with the audience’s emotions.

Another way Mary uses ethos is with her tone. She is not up there screaming and

yelling, but she is up there speaking with a soft tone that gets to the audience. This tone

gives off a vibe that she is truly speaking from her heart and this is not something she is

being forced to say. The speech feels true and that really helps get to the audience's

heart, because if they feel like this is a heart filled speech then they will listen and care

more about what Mary is saying.

We have made many strides in the progress of treating and curing HIV and

AIDS. There still aren’t any cures for the disease but without Mary Fisher’s speech, we

might still be ignoring the disease and be afraid to talk about it. Mary Fisher did a great

job getting through to her audience in this speech, and she used rhetorical strategies

such as ethos, logos, and pathos to her achieve this. Without the effective use of these

strategies her speech would be long forgotten and the AIDS epidemic could be a world

wide killer. Mary Fisher’s speech on HIV opened up the doors for a better future of

dealing with the disease.

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Works Cited:

Fisher, Mary. “A Whisper of AIDS.” 1992 Republican National Convention. Houston,

Texas. 19 Aug. 1992. Address