Victory Spirit Essay Example for Free

Victory Spirit Essay William Safire and James Wood are two different people, with different ideas, different views, but do have similar writing styles. In William Safire’s â€Å"A Spirit Reborn† he talks about the Gettysburg Address in comparison to 9/11 and he also analyzes the Gettysburg Address in more depth and has a specific purpose for writing his article. On the other hand in James Wood’s â€Å"Victory Speech† he talks about how President Obama flowed through different things, Wood also analyzes certain details of Obama’s speech, and offers some critique. â€Å"Now, as then, a national spirit rose from the ashes of destruction† (Safire 41). The Gettysburg Address was given after a horrible incident, with very tragic losses. By going through these destructive events, our nation becomes stronger, and more bonded together. After 9/11, the Gettysburg Address was reborn to bring us remembrance, togetherness and encouragement through tough times. In his essay, Safire states that 9/11 was â€Å"the worst bloodbath on our territory since Antietam Creek† (41). By bringing back past events such as the battle of Antietam, Safire probably strikes a lot of strong emotion from his readers by using it in comparison to 9/11. To reuse a speech such as the Gettysburg Address at a time such as after 9/11 was unlikely to be thought of, since they were two different events, 138 years apart. In Safire’s article in the New York Times, he analyzes the Gettysburg Address in more detail. He talks about how â€Å"you will hear the word dedicate five times† (Safire 42), and what each one of them stand for. For example, he says the first two refer to â€Å"the nation’s dedication to two ideals mentioned in the Declaration of Independence†¦ ‘Liberty’†¦ ‘that all men are created equal† (Safire 42). The third is pointed towards a certain blessing of the location of the battle of Gettysburg, and the fourth and fifth dedications are directed back to the thoughts of liberty and that all men are created equal, for which the deceased men of the battle fought for. Safire also notices that â€Å"the speech is grounded it conception, birth, death, and rebirth† (42). He mentions some specific quotes such as â€Å"The nation was ‘conceived in liberty’†¦ delivered into life – by ‘our fathers† (Safire 42). He also brings up death and re-birth by pulling more quotes from Lincoln’s memorable speech. Safire does not want us to â€Å"listen to only Lincoln’s famous words and comforting cadences† (43). Instead he wants us to remember the message Lincoln was giving to us, he wants us to appreciate the deceased and the missing, and wants to remind us that â€Å"this generation’s response to the deaths of thousands of our people leads to ‘a new birth of freedom† (Safire 43). â€Å"First he moved through the people†¦ Then he moved through the country†¦ then he moved through time† (Wood 611). The purpose Wood says for Obama doing this; was â€Å"to bind those wounds by binding us together† (611). By bringing people from different ages, orientation and gender, from different states and cities, Obama hopes to bring our nation back together as one nation. He also mentions how Ann Nixon Cooper, who is one hundred and six years old, had voted using just a finger, to show how the times have changed. Wood analyzes some details of Obama’s speech, such as how â€Å"Yes we can† changed to â€Å"Yes we did† and â€Å"Yes we may†. Noticing the impact those few words had on the crowd by saying it was â€Å"extraordinarily moving in its sobriety† (Wood 611). Wood also mentions how he added it to past tense, using a note of being uncertain. He also draws attention to Obama’s use of the word promise, after Obama says â€Å"I promise you – we as people will get there† in reference to a hard road to get to change. Wood says the word promise is used in acknowledgement to Martin Luther King’s speech from Memphis, King says â€Å"and I’ve seen the Promised Land, I may not get there with you† but Obama knows he will indeed get where we are going. In the beginning of Wood’s â€Å"Victory Speech† he talks about how â€Å"last Tuesday night was a very good night for the English language† (610). Since James Wood is a critic, it is only fitting that he give some feed-back on Barrack Obama’s speech. He says that â€Å"many of us would have watched in tears as President-elect Obama had just thanked his campaign staff and shuffled off to bed† (Wood 610). Wood says that his speech was filled with such history and emotion, that if he just grumbled thanks, American would not be satisfied. In the end both Safire and Wood had analyzed two different speeches in depth, but Safire had a specific purpose for doing so, to bring emotion, while Wood critiqued. There were a lot of differences, but some similarities, not many, but some.