28 pages • 56 minutes read
Harvey MilkHope Speech
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1978A 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
Rhetorical Appeals
The rhetorical appeals are ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is an appeal to credibility, pathos is an appeal to emotion, and logos is an appeal to logic. Milk uses all three of the rhetorical appeals in his speech, but most strongly uses ethos and pathos. Ethos can be seen through his repeated references to himself as gay and as directly involved in the issues he discusses. He ends his speech with a call to his personal ethos: “I’ve found one overriding thing about my personal election, it’s the fact that if a gay person can be elected, it’s a green light” (5). By using ethos, Milk aims to earn his audience’s trust and belief; if they believe he is trustworthy, they are more likely to listen to his ideas for how to change the future.
Pathos is used throughout the speech as well, from the jokes at the beginning to the poignant description of the grieving gay community on Page 4. Milk’s ability to switch between the emotional and the personal is key to the speech’s success. His ability to recognize the ways in which ethos and pathos work together form the basis for his connection with his audience.
Rhetorical Questions
Rhetorical questions are questions intended to go unanswered, and Milk redirects his audience’s attention with broad rhetorical questions in several areas of the text. After his opening words, he says, “Why are we here? Why are gay people here? And what’s happening?” (2). By asking broad, largely unanswerable questions, Milk makes his audience think about their actual purpose in listening to his speech, while also introducing his own purpose. Later, Milk asks, “Is he speaking out enough? Is he strong enough for gay rights?” (3), again prompting his audience to think. He does not supply an answer to these questions, nor does he invite the audience to answer them themselves. Instead, the speech quickly progresses to the next topic.
By asking all of these questions, Milk draws attention to their purpose and their lack of purpose at the same time, making his audience aware that there are more critical issues than these questions. Asking why gay people exist is less important than acknowledging that they do; asking if Milk is doing enough work is less important than unifying against people who think he is doing the wrong work. The questions highlight that the community needs to focus.
Anaphora
In the speech, Milk extensively uses anaphora, or beginning each sentence with the same words, to emphasize his points and beliefs. In one passage, he says, “In 1977 we saw a dialogue start. In 1977, we saw a gay person elected in San Francisco. In 1977, we saw the state of Mississippi decriminalize marijuana. In 1977, we saw the convention of conventions in Houston” (3). Emphasizing the date of 1977, a year before he delivered this speech, inspires the audience both for the past and for the future, allowing him to direct attention to his goals for 1978. Milk uses anaphora and other forms of repetition in many other parts of “The Hope Speech.” Each time, it serves to get his audience to remember the most important parts of his speech; while an audience member might not remember an ordinary sentence, a point with the same beginning as the surrounding sentences is much more memorable.
Personal Narrative
Personal narrative relates elements through one’s own experiences, typically with first-person language. Throughout the speech, Milk uses first-person pronouns, incorporating elements of personal narrative to stress his active participation in the issues he discusses. He uses his firsthand experiences to illustrate his points, as when he says, “I will never forget what it was like coming out and having nobody to look up toward. I remember the lack of hope” (4). By telling personal stories, Milk makes his speech much more than a collection of talking points; rather, it is something deeply personal and valuable to him as an individual, as it was to much of his audience. Milk’s goal is to emphasize himself as an individual with rights as much as anyone in his audience, as well as identify himself as a gay person whose experiences do not match the stereotypes and prejudices put forward by society.
