Rhetorical Analysis on Bill Clinton's Oklahoma City Bombing Speech

In 1995, tragedy struck in the state of Oklahoma. In Oklahoma City, the federal building was bombed on April 19, where innocent American men, women and children were gruesomely murdered. President William Clinton then gave a powerful speech on April 23, that addressed the situation in all of the correct ways. Everything about this speech was done in the right way because the ethos, logos, pathos, and even the kairos were all appropriate for this speech.

He began this speech addressing the audience by talking about the people who were affected the most, and then about the people of the United States. He then established his credibility as a person who is not only the United States President but also a citizen who is a parent, husband, and a neighbor. The president then stated how he mourned and grieved with everyone who were injured and families who lost loved ones. Clinton used anaphora very well at the start of this speech by emphasizing on the phrase "who worked" many times in one sentence. 

The President then goes on to quote a meaningful letter from a woman who is a widowed mother of three. In this section from the letter that Clinton uses in his speech, she also uses anaphora effectively,"The anger you feel is valid, but you must not allow yourselves to be consumed by it. The hurt you feel must not be allowed to turn into hate, but instead into the search for justice. The loss you feel must not paralyze your own lives. Instead, you must try to pay tribute to your loved ones by continuing to do all the things they left undone, thus ensuring they did not die in vain"(Clinton,1995). The President used this because it could now have a warrant on his audience because the experience the widow went through could be similar for many in the audience. 

As Bill Clinton nears the end of the speech, he ties in the belief of God to get his point across that justice will

prevail and how America will stand up for its' people. At the very end he uses a trope that works very well because

he says, "My fellow Americans, a tree takes a long time to grow, and wounds take a long time to heal. But we must begin. Those who are lost now belong to God. Some day we will be with them. But until that happens, their legacy must be our lives" (Clinton, 1995). The diction in this speech is amazing because his word choice affects his audience greatly. This rhetoric was very successful because President William Clinton knew what to say that would bring American closer after this tragedy by his use of diction, anaphoras, kairos, and warrants. 

Click Here for the text of the speech