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Ronald Reagan Speech Rhetorical Analysis

Submitted By
Words 1129
Pages 5
Emalee Foote
Professor Francis
Eng 105
09 February 16
Ronald Reagan and the Shuttle Challenger Crash On January 28, 1986, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech on the topic of the shuttle Challenger crash from the oval office in Washington D.C. In his speech, he discusses the events that took place and speaks to many about the tragedy. He addresses the children who watched it happen live, NASA workers, the families of the victims, and everyone else in the United States. He discusses what we will do next because even though this is a time of much tragedy we as a nation need to stand together and continue to go on our journey. Ronald Reagan effectively uses pathos and logos to inform the nation of the tragedy and to persuade them that we must not …show more content…
In the first paragraph of his speech he says, “Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger (Reagan).” The use of “mourning,” and “remembering,” as well as the phrase “pained to the core” are meant to evoke emotions of sadness in you. When he says these words and it makes us feel sad or grief stricken he is effectively using pathos. Meaning his words are causing us to feel this sadness. Then Reagan says, “We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.” By Raegan saying, “We all share this pain,” he is uniting us together. The word “we” is meant to signify the nation as a whole. Hence why he says “It is a national loss (Reagan)” this is uniting us together; we are one nation and we stand …show more content…
We must continue on, “We’ll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue (Reagan).” What Reagan is doing is trying to get the nation to see the rational in his words that he believes the NASA program will continue to do great things, and that we should too, “I’ve always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it.” Reagan says, “On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of panama. In his lifetime the frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, “He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.” Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: their dedication was, like Drake’s, complete.” By using this example to compare to the shuttle Challenger’s crash, he is trying to make the audience see that these accidents happen all the time. At the very end of that sentence, he says complete, by saying this he is saying that the Challenger crew did what they needed to. That they did not fail. They were successful in that this experience can help

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