Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address
The Great Depression was the greatest economic crisis in the Western World. The stock market crashed on October 1929, sending Wall Street up in flames. By 1933, the Great Depression reached a high point leaving over thirteen million Americans jobless (“The Great Depression”). Relief and reform measures were soon put into place to lessen the heavy load the Great Depression created, but America would not fully recover until after 1939. Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address as the thirty-second president of the United States on March 4, 1933. The first inaugural address is a monumental speech. America reached a dark place in history and Roosevelt wanted to revive their spirits ("Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inauguration,
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He also used parallelism to emphasize his points. “It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character.” This is also an example of an anaphora. Roosevelt threaded in allusions and specifically ones to the Bible. “We are stricken by no plague of locusts,” he explained the Great Depression was not God’s doing. Roosevelt mentions, “Yes, the moneychangers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization,” He alluded to the Bible when Jesus threw out the moneychangers to restore the house into a temple of prayer. Roosevelt shows the wrong which started the Great Depression. He conveys a positive attitude towards the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech conveyed a powerful message to the American people. He used charisma and a positive attitude to instill confidence back into them. He wanted listeners to have faith and be hopeful for the
He also used parallelism to emphasize his points. “It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character.” This is also an example of an anaphora. Roosevelt threaded in allusions and specifically ones to the Bible. “We are stricken by no plague of locusts,” he explained the Great Depression was not God’s doing. Roosevelt mentions, “Yes, the moneychangers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization,” He alluded to the Bible when Jesus threw out the moneychangers to restore the house into a temple of prayer. Roosevelt shows the wrong which started the Great Depression. He conveys a positive attitude towards the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech conveyed a powerful message to the American people. He used charisma and a positive attitude to instill confidence back into them. He wanted listeners to have faith and be hopeful for the