USA HISTORY

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR(1861 1865)

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

[SOURCES]
Parallelism is a rhetorical term meaning “similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.” In which of the following sentences does Lincoln use parallelism?

(A) “This we may, in all propriety do.”

(B) “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.”

(C) “We are met on a great battlefield of that war.”

(D) “But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground.”

(E) ** Both b and d

EXPLANATIONS BELOW

Concept note-1: -Parallelism is a rhetorical term meaning “similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.” In which of the following sentences does Lincoln use parallelism? (A) “This we may, in all propriety do."

Concept note-2: -Examples of Parallelism Consider two examples from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, both of which involve some repetition of individual words. In the first, the parallel pattern is “[preposition] the people”. In the second, the parallel pattern is “we can not [verb]”.

Concept note-3: -In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln uses rhetorical strategies such as allusions, repetition, and antithesis to remind the listeners of the purpose of the soldier’s sacrifice: equality, freedom, and national unity.

Concept note-4: -Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.

Concept note-5: -The main message of the Gettysburg Address is that ideals are worth dying for and that it is up to the living to carry on the work of those who died to protect ideals. The ideals of equality and freedom are the bedrock of the United States as a nation.