No American school child gets to high school without encountering Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” in at least a partial way.  Lincoln delivered this short speech, and American Rhetoric provides us multiple versions of the speech (text and audio links) for our review.  You will listen to three actor versions:

Jeff Daniels
Colin Powell
Sam Waterston
In doing so, you will select one interpretation as the significant one for you as a listener and explain why it is the superior effort.

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gettysburgaddress.htm (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)

As you listen, you want to consider finding evidence of these three traits in the speech itself:

Parallelism–this rhetorical device employs the sequenced use of a similar pattern (three or more generally) in which the speaker seems to repeat a pattern either to emphasize a point OR emphasize multiple points by changing the last word or phrase to advance the message.  Julius Caesar did this in Shakespeare when he said, “Vinit, Vidit, Vicit” or “I came; I saw; I conquered.
Allusion–this rhetorical device assumes that the use of key phrases will remind the listener of earlier pieces of prose, works of art, elements of scripture, or segments of historical reference that are meant to remind the listener of a connection to an earlier truth.  When someone says, “I took the word less traveled,” for instance, it reminds many of a Robert Frost poem.
Error in Predicting a future truth–this is a moment in the text when, over the course of time, the statement is proven wrong.

So here are the four questions:

1.Which of the three renderings of the address is best for you, as a listener, and what three qualities in the delivery made it so?
2.Where is there a strong use of parallelism to emphasize a point?
3.To what historical reference document does Lincoln allude that connects his audience with the audience of “four score and seven years ago”?
4.Where was Lincoln wrong in his prediction?