20 Good Rhetorical Analysis Essay Topics You Should Consider
In a rhetorical analysis essay, you are expected to talk about the ways in which a writer or speaker tries to convey a point through various devices, including vocabulary, metaphor, hyperbole, example, and allusion, among others. Your job, as the writer, is to break down a speech, monologue, poem, or book into its major points and discuss how each element is meant to convince an audience of the overlying message. In order to write a good rhetorical analysis essay, though, you must first choose a good topic.
It can be difficult to figure out what will make a good topic for a rhetorical analysis essay. Should you pick a speech, a monologue, or a poem? What about a sermon, or a short story? Any of these can be used in a rhetorical analysis essay, but some are going to be easier for you depending on your interests. If you really like politics, maybe you would like to write about a famous presidential speech. If you like Shakespeare, maybe you would like to write about a famous monologue. If you are religious, a sermon might be the most interesting topic for you. Whatever you choose, it should be well-known or at least important in some sense: speeches that happened after major crises or poems that have stood the test of time, for example, will be much more interesting (and easy!) to write about than a forgotten short story or a routine political address. Here are 20 great rhetorical essay topics.
- Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
- Mario Cuomo’s “Shining City on the Hill” Speech
- Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor speech
- George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” Speech
- John F. Kennedy’s 1963 speech in West Berlin
- Hamlet’s monologue where he says “to be or not to be”
- David Foster Wallace’s essay, “Consider the Lobster”
- Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Pit and the Pendulum”
- Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man” speech
- The editorial “Is There A Santa Claus?” by Francis Pharcellus Church (better known as “Yes, Virginia”
- Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech
- William Wallace’s speech to his men in “Braveheart”
- The novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
- Jonathan Edward’s sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”
- William Faulkner’s Nobel Peace Prize speech
- President Obama’s inaugural address
- Richard Nixon’s “I Am Not a Crook” speech
- Calvin Coolidge’s 1923 State of the Union address, the first presidential speech to be broadcast on the radio
- The poem “I Saw In Louisiana A Live-Oak Growing” by Walt Whitman
- Tom Hanks’ Academy Award acceptance speech for “Philadelphia”