Rhetorical Analysis #5: Analysis of Aragorn's speech.

I forgot to do #4. I am fail :(

The speech I'm analyzing for this analysis is Aragorn's speech to the Men of the West in The Return of the King movie. It goes like this:

"Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship; but it is not this day! An hour of wolves, and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down; but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"
-Aragorn.

I got that transcript off of wikipedia, which is cool.

#1: What is the speech's goal?
The goal is to persuade the Men of the West to make a last stand against Sauron, the Dark Lord of Mordor.

#2: What is the speech's argument?
That the Men of the West should stand and fight because they will be victorious--the Age of Men will come crashing down at one point but, if they fight, that won't happen today. Ergo, they should fight to salvage the Age of Men.

#3: Who is the audience?
The audience is the small group of men of Gondor and Rohan (and also some hobbits and a dwarf and an elf and also Gandalf) who are gathered on the field in front of the Black Gate of Mordor who are about to fight Sauron's forces in the culminating battle of the war against Sauron.

#4: How?
Aragorn first appeals to ethos by establishing his credibility with his audience. He reminds them that he shares similar values with his audience by calling them his "brothers." He also appeals to pathos by reminding them of "all that [they] hold dear on this good earth." Aragorn thus appeals to their sense of rightness and justice, but, most importantly, to their desire to defend Middle Earth's goodness against Mordor's evilness. He also addresses the audience's fear that they will fail by describing the day when the Age of Men will finally fail as "a day of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down." However, he uses this fear to spur the audience to fight: "It is not this day. This day, we fight." Aragorn thus successfully uses both ethos and pathos in his short speech to encourage his men to fight for their freedom.

STAR:

Sufficient--Aragorn doesn't really offer any evidence that the Men of the West will succeed and Mordor will fail. His role as Elessar perhaps encourages his men to believe that since Aragorn says that the Age of Men won't fail today, he's probably right. Aragorn's speech is mostly emotional and not logical; he doesn't draw from facts, since the army of Mordor is much larger than his own army. Therefore, the evidence he gives is all emotional--because they believe in their cause, the men of the West will prevail. Therefore, depending on how you look at it, Aragorn either fails to give sufficient logical evidence, or he succeeds at giving sufficient emotional evidence to encourage the Men of the West to fight.

Typical--the Men of the West are all pretty typical people, and they all accept the speech, so the evidence Aragorn gives obviously worked for them. I don't know that a rational person under less emotional duress would accept the argument, though, since the odds are obviously against them. However, a cause-driven person wanting to believe that they aren't about to be massacred by the overwhelmingly large opposing forces would probably still buy into Aragorn's argument.

Accurate--He does present the counterargument that one day the Age of Men will fail, and his frightening description of that day doesn't set the counterargument up as an easy thing that he can just push over. Instead, he assuages his men's fears by conveying the idea that while the Age of Men will one day fail, if they fight, they can stave off that time until later, which seems to be pretty effective.

Relevant--The speech is short and to the point, so I think there isn't any extraneous material here. Everything he says is directly related to encouraging the Men of the West to fight; there isn't anything extraneous or anything that could be interpreted as a red herring.

#5: Effective?
Yes. The speech is obviously effective in that it does rally the Men of the West in the movie, encourage them, and enable them to fight and win. I think the speech is largely emotional and doesn't draw from anything logical except for Aragorn's drive to win, which might not make it effective to any other audience; however, for this particular audience, the speech is just perfect.

Here is a picture demonstrating the speech's effectiveness:



THE END!

Ps. The best part of this experience was that I wrote this post while watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ltps17if3t8&feature=related
Watch it until you start to really understand the intensity of that hair. It kept surprising me all the way through, springing out at me in every screen shot like a tiger. A terrifying, but engaging, experience.