Woodrow Wilson Essay Example
During the second half of President Woodrow Wilson’s first administration, he fought to keep the United States out of World War I. In trying to keep the United States out of war, President Wilson delivered his Second Inaugural Address on March 5, 1917.Although, President Wilson hopes for peace; he believed that America would have to eventually get involved. In an attempt to tell about his hope of peace, Wilson used this speech to appeal ethically and emotionally to the citizens. With the use of ethos, allusions, repetitions and other strategies, President Wilson spoke of his point of aiming for peace and trying not to get involved in the war. To begin with, in paragraphs three thru six there is the use allusion, repetition of ethos, and euphuism to the war, parallelism, and juxtaposition. But, the repletion of ethos is strongly used throughout the entire speech. The use of “we”, “our”, and “us” helps create a very strong ethos because it is repeated many times. This shows that there is an idea of unity and staying together. President Wilson uses this “unity” as a strength point to show that if they work together than they can stay out of the war. His strong diction creates an immensely strong ethos. Wilson uses euphuism for war. He says, “It has been impossible to avoid them.” in this quote “them” represents war. Wilson is conveying that America was going to have to get involved no matter what happened. Without saying “war” he is saying it in a nicer way. The parallelism is shown in “ The currents of our thoughts as well as the currents of our trade run quickly at all seasons back and forth between us and them.” The parallelism in this excerpt shows the connections between Europe and the United States through the exchange of thoughts and materials. Although an ocean away, these two distant territories were linked by constant trade, which helped, support the economies and societies on both sides. Ideas were transferred from one side of the ocean to the other, as