EthosIf this speech were a Spike Lee film, it'd be Do the Right Thing…and not just because it deals with tensions in lower-class neighborhoods.Teddy Roosevelt in this speech is moralizing, from t...

Variations on a ThemeThis speech is a hard one to break down. Teddy Roosevelt is, in this speech, awfully fond of repetition. He pretty much goes in a circle, saying (roughly), "Lying is bad and jo...

PersuasiveWith the amount of backpedaling and dwelling on the same points that he does, you can definitely tell Teddy's trying to sell the audience on ideas that they might not find intuitive. Ther...

The speech was initially unnamed and had the scintillating title of "Address at the Cornerstone Laying Ceremony of the Cannon Office Building." (Yawn.)But considering how resonant its first metapho...

Over a century ago Washington laid the corner stone of the Capitol in what was then little more than a tract of wooded wilderness here beside the Potomac. We now find it necessary to provide by gre...

The foundation stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high individual character of the average citizen. (96) Just like Captain Planet, TR ends his speech with saying, "The power is y...

(2) Sea LevelAs long as "The Man with the Muckrake" speech is, it really has only one core idea that he restates throughout the piece. If you're willing to Google some of the more obscure reference...

In-Text ReferencesLiterary and Philosophical ReferencesBishop Richard Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I (1592)John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress from the World to That Which is to Come; Delive...

Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, actually wasn't specifically targeting the meat-packing industry. As a lifelong socialist, he wanted to draw attention to the kinds of conditions that modern c...