Truman Rhetoric Case

Rhetorical Letter Analysis

In this letter to Bess, President Harry Truman showed multiple types of rhetorical devices. This letter gives his tone of love and longing for his wife and family while settling political issues after the end of World War II while his word choice and diction gives you his opinion on politics. President Truman shows an extreme amount of pathos to his wife, while also expressing ethos and logos when discussing politics and his time with Russian Communist leader, Joseph Stalin.

In this letter, you can tell President Truman is feeling a multitude of feelings and emotions with his tone and word choice in this letter. Furthermore, you can also theorize one or two things about his life and upbringing. President Truman's word choice displays his tiredness and his exasperation, which is easily understood by looking at the date of the letter and the location he is in, July 29, 1945, and Berlin, Germany. You can deduce that the President is most likely tying up loose ends of World War II. You can tell he's exhausted when he states "...we can wind this brawl up by Tuesday and we'll head for home immediately." (Pg. 1) President Truman just wants to get home. This is more prominent with the fact that he added the work immediately at the end of the sentence. He isn't coming home a day or two after or in a week, but immediately. It seems also that President Truman is a little exasperated when he says "If I come out of this one whole...".(Pg. 1) It's almost sarcasm he's using when saying this like the conference is a giant fight, and he's tired of the long dealings.

His word choice also lets you assume if you didn't already know that politics can get very difficult. He calls the conference a brawl, (which is also a type of figure of speech) and that instead of a group of world leaders sitting down talking about the effects of WWII, is just a giant fist fight. This is also ironic since these men are trying to come up with a peace agreement after a very bloody war. President Truman also adds "...can get a reasonably sound approach..." (Pg. 1) which you can convey that there has been some difficulty in the past since he is now only looking for a reasonably sound approach, not a great or excellent sound approach. This also reveals a little bit of his tiredness and exasperation since he's not trying for anything better. He also implies that politics could switch in a matter of a second when he asks his wife, "Pray for me and keep your fingers crossed." (Pg. 1) He obviously needs some good vibes to help carry over the conference and let some of the agreements pass through. But the most obvious in his letter I consider is a statement that I mentioned earlier, "If I come out of this one whole...". (Pg. 1) He gives the illusion that politics is a vicious war where people can backhand