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Rhetorical Analysis Of The Right To Fail By William Zinsser

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For over two hundred years the American Dream, or national ethos of the United Sates, revolved around a set of ideals put forward in the Declaration of Independence which declares that all Americans are equal and have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” For immigrants arriving on these shores, regardless of social class or circumstance of birth, it was a given of the time that prosperity, success, and upward social mobility for all (excluding slavers) was obtainable and could be achieved through honest, hard work. Today that dream is not dead, although recently there has been a death of soaring rhetoric and a paucity of hope. So while the American Dream may at the moment be on life support and in critical condition, …show more content…
In the concluding statement of his essay, William states: “Maybe we are learning again to cherish this right of every person to succeed on his own terms and to fail as often as necessary along the way.” This demonstrates to me that the American Dream is alive and well to all those with the peripheral vision to see the many possibilities still within the grasp of Americans flexible enough to go over, under, around, or even through the often self-imposed barriers we put in front of ourselves. And failing only means that one try and try again, before modifying the goal to our advantage, instead of repeatedly pounding our collective heads against the wall and expecting a different, more traditionally successful result. Similarly, in Barack Obama's keynote address, the description of his life’s journey supports my thesis of the American Dream being alive and well. In the speech, he states: “In no other country on Earth, is my story even possible.” when referring to himself and his family's remarkable achievements. Saying this, he gives self-evident proof from his own life that the American Dream is still attainable through hard work and that every child in America with big ears, a Punahou, Columbia, Harvard (or possibly Yale) education, and a supportive extended family, can one day grow up to be

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