Rhetoric Practice
While eloquently presenting her eulogy in 2004, Margaret Thatcher honors the life of Ronald Reagan. She speaks to both the American and English individuals, providing them with comfort as she uses words of respect. She emphasizes his respect and initiative by appealing to ethos, exploiting metaphors, and thoughtfully conveying parallelism.
Thatcher also applies ethos to concrete her reasoning of Reagan's great character and the devastation of his passing. To begin her eulogy, Thatcher affirms, 'We have lost a great president, a great American, and a great man, and I have lost a dear “friend.” With the involvement of anaphora, her repetition of “great” emphasizes Reagan and his character, yet she additionally includes a recognizable contradiction to the last phrase, which describes Reagan as Thatcher's 'dear friend'. Thatcher calls Reagan 'dear' as opposed to 'great' when alluding to her very own association with the past President. As an authority above them, Thatcher segregates herself from the audience. This authority is discovered again later when Thatcher announces, “As Prime Minister, I worked closely with Ronald Reagan . . .” Thatcher presents herself as an authority of the state, Prime Minister, to expand the validity of her argument as Reagan’s close working partner rather than simply as one of his admirers. By identifying herself as Prime Minister and Reagan’s “dear friend”, Thatcher increases the credibility of her eulogy and promotes the sincerity she has as somebody who is genuinely true when she speaks on behalf of Reagan as a leader and idealistic man who will be remembered fondly.
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Thatcher exploits metaphors in her commendation to make a respectful, glorified perspective on Reagan. She says, 'He looked to patch America's injured soul, to re-establish the quality of the free world.' This methodology centers around his ideal objectives instead of his policies. By implementing this metaphor, Thatcher develops an appearance of Reagan as a person who was powerful to his greatest extent, yet benevolent. By focusing on the policies rather than the actions, she endeavors to eradicate any negative pictures of Reagan from individuals' minds. The implementation of the metaphor communicates a visual of Reagan rather than the man himself, allowing him to appear to be practically more than human.
Thatcher likewise abridged Reagan's achievements and objectives so as to help the world remember the effectiveness of his presidency. Thatcher says Reagan, “sought to mend America’s wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism”. With the use of the phrase 'to mend,' 'to restore,' and 'to free', Thatcher initiates Reagan as a man of action and healing. These characteristics intensify the audience's endorsement of Reagan and amplify their sorrow. The parallel structure of the infinitives features Reagan's actions and wishes for the benefit of the audience’s appearance of Reagan. The sentence continues to incorporate pathos, for example, “wounded spirit” and “slaves of communism”. These miserable characters are spared by Reagan through his rehabilitating and liberation which further identifies Reagan as a successful president and extraordinary man.
In establishing herself as Prime Minister to speak to power, including metaphoric expressions, and grammatical structure to parallel Reagan's actions to his renovating character, Thatcher enhances the melancholy of losing a former President by a hundred folds in the hearts of her audience. She concretes Reagan's legacy as a genuine legend and commander which left her audience in complete admiration and sorrow.
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