Obama's Hope for America
What constitutes "hope"? Can you "hope" that you receive an A on a test? Can you "hope" that you'll find friends in high school who support you just as much as you support them? Hope doesn't just come; it's a powerful driving force needed to help us achieve and fight for the possibilities. What's the point of hoping for something without doing anything? Michelle Obama takes her place in this topic through the speech she provided during her husband's time in office. During Barack Obama's time in office from 2009 to 2017, Michelle Obama, too, became a pivotal symbol of America. She led many initiatives and became a beacon of hope in society. During her husband's administration, one initiative she led included supporting high school counselors' efforts to get students into college. On January 6, 2017, she gave her final speech as First Lady to honor the outstanding achievements of the counselors. In her speech during an event honoring school counselors, Obama appeals to ethos and utilizes repetition and collective powerful diction to convey her message about her expectations and hope for young people in the United States.
Obama appeals to ethos, providing personal anecdotes to draw in the audience, encouraging them to listen to her speech to achieve her purpose. When starting off her speech, Obama emphasizes the importance of how anything is possible, reassuring the listeners who are doubtful about their future and lack hope. She recognizes the families who struggle financially and mentions the endless possibilities that can be achieved through hard work and a good education. She states that she and her husband "started off with very little. But with a lot of hard work and a good education, anything is possible." Here, Obama appeals to her own life to show a shared collective experience, demonstrating the similarities she once had with those struggling, encouraging the audience to feel a relation with her. Now being the First Lady and her husband being the first ever Black president in America, they symbolize the endless possibilities hard work and education can achieve, reassuring the audience and providing them a prime example of this possibility. Later in her speech, she further achieves her purpose of expressing her hopes for young people by providing advice to the younger generation using a personal anecdote about her father. Obama provides advice and highlights the great achievements school counselors have made to help their students succeed without giving up. She relates this to her father, stating how her dad "got up every day to do his job at the city water plant" with the hope that his kids would go to college and "have the opportunities he never dreamed of." Obama not only emphasizes the sacrifices and grueling work parents do to hope their kids achieve and give them the best possible future, but she also emphasizes the importance of not giving up, an expectation she holds for the young people in America. She uses her dad as a symbol for hope, representing the resilience he had to ensure his kids would have opportunities he couldn't attain. Lastly, Obama utilizes another anecdote to achieve her purpose. She communicates her expectations that younger people will fight and work hard for what they hope to achieve through an experience she and her husband encountered a decade ago that represents the power of hope—a statement that carried her through every moment during those years. She states that when encountering obstacles, she and her husband believed that "something better is always possible if you're willing to work for it and fight for it." Here, Obama communicates the importance of resilience, drive, and perseverance: that despite obstacles, she hopes that the younger generation can overcome the rocks that are trying to squash them. By providing an anecdote she and her husband experienced, them being higher role positions in America allows the audience to feel seen, and not the only ones that may be struggling. Despite the position, fame, and titles that they have, they, too, have had to persevere to get to where they are today—to achieve the success and life that they now can provide to their children.
Further, Obama utilizes repetition and collective diction to further achieve her purpose. Towards the beginning of her speech, Obama mentions a range of religions and their importance to shaping America and its traditions. She emphasizes how these religions have taught the younger generation about justice, compassion, and honesty. This recognition allows her to communicate her hope that young people continue to practice these values with pride, and the hope that younger people will never feel that they don't matter, especially in the place of America. By mentioning multiple religions, she creates a collective atmosphere where she highlights the importance of everyone's religion, further encouraging the audience to be drawn into her speech and making her speech more impactful. Her collective diction allows the audience to feel seen and that they matter, a reflection of what she is hoping for the younger people in America. Towards the end, Obama utilizes repetition of "hope" to emphasize the future steps she hopes to witness within the country. She states that the power of hope has allowed us to rise above conflict, and "our hope that if we work hard enough and believe in ourselves...the hope that when people see us for who we truly are," they too will be inspired. Here, Obama utilizes both collective diction and repetition. She utilizes collective diction such as "us" and "our" to emphasize the shared community once more, and how everyone is striving towards a shared goal. She also utilizes "hope" to emphasize her future desires she hopes to witness within America. She uses this repetition to reflect the future she strives to see once out of office. The repetition of "hope" also communicates the importance of having it and using it to strive for success. She communicates to the audience the importance of it by stating that it is "the kind of hope that every single one of us" needs to be "providing for you young people." As she believes that hope can allow the country to move forward. Hope for her represents the driving force that the younger people need, and by emphasizing this idea of "hope," she hopes that it inspires the younger generation to work hard and achieve success.