The Gettysburg Address is a famous speech that will be remembered for ages to come. What makes this such an effective and moving speech? In the speech Lincoln uses rhetorical strategies such as repetition to make the reader feel. Lincoln uses repetition to emphasize the location the battle took place, the people who died there, and how important that is to the Civil War, In the middle of the second paragraph Lincoln says “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detractThe world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advancedt” He repeats the word “here“ four times emphasizing the location and the battle, the lives lost, and the cause advanced.
This is prominent because the Battle of Gettysburg was further North than any large battle so far in the Civil War. The emphasis on the location is meant to stress how close to home the Southern army has gotten and it’s meant to stress the need for more action, not only to stop the oppression of slavery but to get the war off the people‘s lawns. The South tried to use this battle to dishearten the Northern forces and Lincolns goal, using this speech, was to turn that around, To do this he had to emphasise the need for ending this war, and needed to show that the fastest way to do this was to win He needed more people to believe in the cause, to believe that they were in the right, and that they needed to continue the fight these men died for.
“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this_ ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above oi poor power to add or detracts” In these sentences Lincoln uses repetition to emphasise the people “this ground” where they fought. He’s trying to show the people that these men who died, died for a worthy cause that they need to continue that fight “we can not dedicate“ to “we can not consecrate” to ”we can not M building up to “this ground” then saying it was them, the ones who died that make this place important, they were the ones who fought the battle for justice, the battle for right, and they are who you should fight for now. It’s a sort of “don’t let them die in vain” type thing, We can’t make nearly as much of an impact here as they did, so if you want to make a differencejoin the fight, fight for your nation the those who died for its.
