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APPENDIX B: RHETORICAL DEVICES IN ANTIWAR SPEECHES While the rhetorical devices described and illustrated below are not unique to the genre of American antiwar speeches, they are found in abundance there, and so the vast majority of examples below are taken from speeches in this anthology. Here I follow the classical model that distinguishes clearly between tropes and figures or schemes—one that remained substantially intact in most rhetoric handbooks through at least 1960.1 I avoid classifications and subclassifications as much as possible—first, because many such classifications are debatable, and second, because an excessive classification scheme will not serve my purpose. The reader should nevertheless be mindful that each of the entries below is a summary, and that each trope, figure, or scheme has spawned a body of scholarship in its own right.2 Tropes Metaphor. An implicit comparison between two things that, though fundamentally different, have a common feature. Metaphors usually appear in the form X is Y. War is hell. —General William Tecumseh Sherman, as quoted by Charles Eliot Norton during the SpanishAmerican War Military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy. —Abraham Lincoln, during the Mexican-American War Simile. An explicit comparison between two things that, though fundamentally different, have a common feature. Similes usually appear in the form X is like Y. His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like an ant on a hot stove, finding no position on which it can settle down, and be at ease. —Abraham Lincoln on President Polk’s vacillating justifications for the Mexican-American War; Lincoln changed his simile in his published speech, which has Polk’s mind running ‘‘like some tortured creature on a burning surface’’ If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. —Martin Luther King Jr., encouraging listeners to oppose the Vietnam War Closely related to the tropes of metaphor and simile are the tropes of allegory and parable. For our purposes, an allegory is a continued or sustained metaphor. A parable can be thought of as a condensed allegory, and though both tropes are often used to teach lessons, a parable is often associated specifically with religious or moral instruction. A crown of stars is on that giant’s head, some glorious with flashing, many-colored light; some bloody red; some pale and faint, of most uncertain hue. His right hand lies folded in his robe; the left rests on the Bible’s opened page, and holds these sacred words—All men are equal, born with equal rights from God. The old man says to the young, ‘‘Brother, Beware!’’ and Alps and Rocky Mountains say ‘‘Beware!’’ That stripling giant, ill-bred and scoffing, shouts amain: ‘‘My feet are red with the Indian’s blood; my hand has forged the negro’s chain. I am strong; who dares assail me? I will drink his blood, for I have made my covenant of lies and leagued with hell for my support. There is no Right, no Truth; Christianity is false, and God a name.’’ His left hand rends those sacred scrolls, casting his Bibles underneath his feet, and in his right he brandishes the negro-driver’s whip—crying again—‘‘Say, who is God, and what is Right.’’ And all his mountains echo PAGE 222 ................. 18232$ APPB 05-30-12 14:56:18 PS rhetorical devices in antiwar speeches 223 Right. But the old Genius sadly says again: ‘‘Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not prosper.’’ The hollow tomb of Egypt, Athens, Rome, of every ancient State, with all their wandering ghosts, replies ‘‘Amen.’’ —Theodore Parker on Uncle Sam during the Mexican-American War Go out into an agricultural community; you may select the best that you have. Pick out two men living side by side on farms, with nothing but an imaginary line between their land. Pick out two farmers, who are honest and well meaning, and, to make it as strong as you can, take two belonging to the same church and sitting in adjoining pews under the same interpretation of the Scripture. Suppose they try to preserve peace on the European plan, how will they go at it? One of them will go to town and get the best gun he can find, and then...

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