Loida Manongsong

BSED ENGLISH 3101

Gettysburg Address: An Analysis

On November 19, we mark the history of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in 1863. Abraham
Lincoln, a self-taught lawyer, lawmaker, and vocal opponent of slavery, was elected as the 16th President
of the United States in November 1860, just before the Civil War broke out. In “The Gettysburg Address”
Abraham Lincoln brings his point across of dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg by using parallelism,
antithesis, alliteration, and repetition in order to effectively deliver the content of the speech.

The iconic Gettysburg address is also notorious for being brief. Lincoln relied heavily on forceful,
well-written phrases to get the job done. Parallel structures appear practically continually and in much
closer proximity than in a longer discourse. In the second paragraph, the first statement begins with 'Now
we are' and the second sentence begins with 'we are.' This highlights the social and cohesive nature of
everyone in attendance during the ceremony. 'We have' expands on this, with a shift in the final line,
which finishes but does not begin with another 'we' statement. It is vital that we do so currently.

Returning to The Gettysburg Address, we can find many examples of antithesis, from simple ones
such as "The brave men, living and dead" (juxtaposing "living" and "dead") and more subtle ones such as
the contrast between "say" and "did" in this sentence: "The world will little note nor long remember what
we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

In his speech, Abraham Lincoln utilizes alliteration, in his first sentence, “Four score and seven
years ago our fathers brought forth”, he uses the same sound in “Four score”, “fathers”, and “forth”, he
does this to reinforce the meaning, it unifies his ideas, and helps him introduce the topic he is going to
talk about. He talks about what the country was founded on, which is equality.

Repetition is a significant rhetorical strategy used by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln
builds successions of words that follow the same structure and build toward a cohesive result at numerous
times during the speech. One such example is “that government of the people, by the people, for the
people,” which has entered the American lexicon for its forcefulness and memorability.

To wrap up, the author is trying to teach us that we may learn a lot about public speaking by
analyzing historical speeches. One of the great speeches is the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln took his
listeners on an expedition. It started with the founding of America and finished at a crossroads in the path.
He wanted to ensure that Americans took the correct path. And he achieved it. We may never deliver a
speech or give a presentation as memorable as the Gettysburg Address is, but we can still have an impact
when we speak.