Inaugural Speech

I believe that I understood this chapter of “Analyzing Prose” easier than the previous ones. However, he kept using examples before either clearly defining his terms, to let you know what to look out for, or letting you know what he was about to give you an example of, which made it harder to figure out for yourself the traits of a style. Also, the example he used for periodic style seemed clear and mostly periodic. His later examples of running styles were very mixed with periodic. So most of my questions were eventually answered with re-reading or looking up terms from other sources, and most of them were because I was unsure about the different styles he was throwing at me.

I listened to Clinton’s speech before I read it. Doing this greatly revealed his oratory strength. Sentences which on the page start, stop and divide, flow together and build in intensity and fervor to a fever pitch and revelatory climax when heard spoken.

The revelation I write of is brought about in his use of suspensive periodic style. In the beginning of his speech, there is a long sentence on the foundations of America and what it would have to do to “endure”. We as listeners endure the length of the sentence, and at the very end, find out what allows us and America to do so: Change. “When our founders boldly declared America's independence to the world and our purposes to the Almighty, they knew that America, to endure, would have to change.” Once this balm is revealed, it is reinforced by repetition throughout the speech, and immediately in the following sentence three times. But the most obvious use of the periodic style sounds very much like Lanham’s example of H.J. Rose on Seneca, “But when most people are working harder for less; when others cannot work at all; when the cost of health care devastates families and threatens to bankrupt many of our enterprises, great and small; when fear of crime robs law-abiding citizens of their freedom; and when millions of poor children cannot even imagine the lives we are calling them to lead—we have not made change our friend.” Once again the parallel list of grievances precedes the answer to cure them, setting out a picture of life as it is now, and the answer that Clinton proposed to bring about. The periodic style is one of already carefully considered, thought-out observations. Clinton’s use of it would make him seem like a leader able to make careful considerations.

Clinton’s use of repetition is extensive. Not only does he single out certain words to stress, such as “change”, “time”, and but themes and phrases are also repeated, such as the theme of spring, new seasons, and renewal, and the theme of service. The phrase, “We must” reoccurs twelve times, most within a span of only six sentences. This creates an imperative, urgent mood, enforced by his repeated use of the metaphor of forcing spring even in winter. The climactic assurance that NOW is the time calls for immediacy of action in passages such as, “From our revolution, the Civil War, to the Great Depression to the civil rights movement, out people lave always mustered the determination to construct from these crises the pillars of our history. Thomas Jefferson believed that to preserve the foundations of our nation, we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow citizens, this is our time. Let us embrace it.” When Clinton says these words about our past, he build them almost to a crescendo, and then holds off for one moment more, like the second at the top of a rollercoaster, when he reminds us on the theme of time, stalls with “Well, my fellow citizens”, and then roars to a point of present time and action.

He uses isocolon to highlight comparison and connection, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America”, “envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal”, “with peaceful diplomacy when ever possible, with force when necessary”. This, and other instances, as with the almost-rhyming isocolon-rich sentence, “Communications and commerce are global; investment is mobile; technology is almost magical; and ambition for a better life is now universal” bring a very poetic feel to this speech. As he spoke of renewal as well as saluting the ‘classic’ America that made it through the “revolution, the Civil War…the Great Depression...[and] the civil rights movement,” it seemed as if he was emulating earlier, highly quotable orators from Western history, even mirroring Churchill’s repeated insistence that “we will fight”. This may be because equating himself with figures such as Churchill and John F. Kennedy while preaching a new age might make him seem more trustworthy than the “Powerful people [who] maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.” Their “intrigue and calculation” would be masked in dry, technical, uninspiring language, designed to confuse and deceive an honest, hardworking public.