ESSAY                                                                                   sofia salum

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Thesis statement: Both speeches use strong emotional appeal, the use similar tools to send a certain message or create an specific reaction, however I do think Fidel Castro’s speech was both more powerful and more effective than the speech given by Winston Churchill.

Both speeches were given in difficult times, either during a war or during the aftermath of a war, therefore they both had a lot of materials and tools to enforce emotional appeal. The message that Winston Churchill was aiming to communicate was very clearly stated by him. Fidel’s was different it was not aiming for one goal but for several, and the speech was going to be heard by the UN and all around the globe therefore he had to expand the message. The emotional appeal used by Fidel Castro intended to unite people and to get them somewhat angry, or involved emotionally with the worldwide situation.

The question is why send out that particular message? The year was 1979 and the world was still recovering from the last violent years of war, to a certain extent it is easy to deduce the type of message or approach someone should take to make a global population listen, but the message goes beyond that, once analyzing the speech it becomes clear he is not trying to get others to listen only, he is trying to get the involved, to include them as subjects in his speech. One of the easiest and most efficient ways to get people involved is to create emotions or feeling within them he uses this several times expressing his anger, disappointment and finally hope.

Something that was a very efficient tool used by both speakers was the exposure, mostly in Castro’s but Churchill uses this as well, what I mean by exposure is that as they speak they both expose the situation, the unfairness and the horror of the world. Castro’s exposes everyone without exception the rich nations, the economical system, the governments and the global population. An example of this is often seen during the speech, this allowed him to instantly make everyone responsible for all of this, that creates anger amongst people and then he says that it is in our hands to make it better, to change that creates hope.

On the other hand Churchill’s speech goes directed to an specific audience , to the British and their allies. Both of them (Castro and Churchill)  try to unite people in a common cause or a common situation for example Churchill tries to unite the British people into a group of people who will love and support their nation until they achieve the victory. He uses a different approach, very straight-forward in a way that he is willing to expose the horrific situation of the war to the people, this message was clearly something strong that a lot of world leaders would never even dare to spread, but he did.

The message was sent and it was strong, everyone was exposed, responsible angry and yet hopeful, the speech given by Fidel Castro was extremely effective and very powerful. There are many true things that people should know and should say but no one does and he did he left humanity exposed to itself, this speech is honestly my favorite speech ever specially for a quote he says, almost at the end but he says that an atomic bomb may kill the ignorant people, the sick people and the poor people. But a bomb can’t kill ignorance, sickness or poverty. This quote was (to my opinion) the most powerful part of the speech.

¡La explotación de los países pobres por los países ricos debe cesar!

Sé que en muchos países pobres hay también explotadores y explotados.

Me dirijo a las naciones ricas para que contribuyan. Me dirijo a los países pobres para que distribuyan.

¡Basta ya de palabras! ¡Hacen falta hechos!

-Fidel Castro UN 1979