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Abraham LincolnGettysburg Address
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1863A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Brevity
Abraham Lincoln was a superb communicator known for his eloquence and wit. He spent hours preparing the Gettysburg Address, but instead of a long-winded oration like that of his fellow presenter, Edward Everett, Lincoln kept his remarks short. The text contains less than 270 words in 10 sentences arranged in five brief paragraphs.
The tightly honed words shine all the more powerfully for being concise. Lincoln sums up the entire spirit of the American experiment as “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” (Paragraph 1). Later, he captures the purpose of the ceremony: “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain” (Paragraph 5). Every sentence is crafted and polished to communicate a particular idea and achieve a particular rhetorical effect.
Religious Symbolism
Lincoln knew his audience well. 19th-century Americans were a highly religious people accustomed to sermons and familiar with the Bible or other religious texts. Accordingly, Lincoln chose expressions that added spiritual heft to his address. He begins with a description of the passage of time since the American Revolution: “Four score and seven years ago” (Paragraph 1), a turn of phrase that might have sprung from a psalm in the King James Bible. (A score is twenty years.) The next words, “our fathers,” refer to the nation’s founders but evoke the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer. As he closes the speech, he speaks of “this nation, under God” as if to round off a sermon or benediction rather than a political oration (Paragraph 5).
To this day, the Gettysburg Address evokes a kind of hushed awe, as if it weren’t a speech but a sermon on the great purpose of America. It’s likely this was Lincoln’s intent. The occasion—a consecration of the resting place of dead soldiers—was itself spiritual in nature; the ceremony was replete with prayers, benedictions, and hymns. Lincoln’s address, with its sprinkling of religious hints and references, deliberately matched the occasion while appealing to the spiritual and idealistic sentiments of his audience.
Repetition
Lincoln makes effective use of repetition. He repeats certain words for emphasis in specific ways. In one case, he says of the cemetery, “[W]e cannot dedicate ... we cannot consecrate ... we cannot hallow this ground” (Paragraph 3). This is an example of anaphora (“uh-NAH-fur-uh”), where words at the beginning of a phrase are repeated, often multiple times, for emphasis. By repeating “we cannot,” over and over, Lincoln underscores that the living really can’t honor the dead sufficiently to do justice to them. The repetition also builds to an emotional climax, leading the audience through successively more spiritual terms; a secular authority can “dedicate” something, and a religious authority can “consecrate” something, but only God can typically “hallow” something.
Lincoln uses a similar technique at the end of the speech, when he intones that “[G]overnment of the people ... by the people ... for the people ... shall not perish from this earth” (Paragraph 5). Repeating a word or words at the end of a phrase is an epistrophe (“uh-PIS-truh-fee”); its purpose is nearly identical to an anaphora. Lincoln again uses repetition to emphasize an important ideal, striking the same words like drums over and over.
Another form of repetition is the periodic use of the single word “here,” which Lincoln does eight times in his short address. For example, he says, “those who here gave their lives” (Paragraph 3), “who struggled here” (Paragraph 4), “what we say here” (Paragraph 4), and “what they did here” (Paragraph 4). This makes clear to his audience how important the place is where they have gathered, and how important the sacrifice made in that place was.
Lincoln also uses the word “dedicate” six times: “dedicated to the proposition” (Paragraph 1); “so conceived and so dedicated” (Paragraph 2), “We have come to dedicate” (Paragraph 2), “we cannot dedicate” (Paragraph 3), “to be dedicated here” (Paragraph 5), and “to be here dedicated” (Paragraph 5). Lincoln’s grand purpose is to finish the war and reunite the nation; he uses the cemetery speech to urge his listeners to continue that cause by recommitting themselves to the struggle carried forward by the soldiers who died heroically. Lincoln takes the word “dedicate”—with its overtones of spirit, honor, loyalty, and effort—and shifts its meaning from the formal, ceremonial act of consecration to the impassioned, committed act of defending freedom. A change in what is being dedicated accompanies this shift; as Lincoln looks beyond the day’s purpose to the future, it is no longer the people dedicating the place but the place dedicating the people.
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By Abraham Lincoln
