The speech, delivered by William Faulkner dates to 1949, the post-war times where appeals were to touch people’s feelings first. Therefore, the rhetorical strategy in the given speech comprises the pathos, which is rather personified, inductive reasoning, which one can support with evidence from the author’s literature and deductive reasoning that is to target the general audience on the given issues.

First of all, the pathos in the speech shall be analyzed to comprehend the context and the direction of the speech. The author refers to the personified story that was linked to the received award. Namely, the author implicitly expresses his gratitude to challenges he had faced throughout his life where human spirit played a role of the decisive factor of his determination and the flow of life. By explaining the reasoning for his works, which lied in his personal tragedy and the ultimate appreciation of the human dignity and human spirit. Thus, reasoning starts with catching the attention of the audience by presenting the context of his personal tragedy and referring to the war times where a lot of terms which were previously perceived as a common sense then gained a negative connotation due to the change of context.

After presenting the idea of pathos, inductive reasoning moves to the provision of examples and presenting an explicit idea of the change that the humankind faced in those years. First, he transits from pathos to inducing reasoning by explaining the concept of fear that was bore in the recent events in those years. What’s yet remarkable is that in the due events it became acceptable among the general public due to the newly emerging problems. Precisely, the key question the author poses is “When will I be blown up?” Thus, the war and its fruits bore a constant fear of being a part of the environment where one has to adjust to the circumstances where an individual is no longer entitled to make decisions and act independently, regardless of contexts dictated by the war. Yet, the fear was spreading and took over people’s lives in many dimensions which would sometimes eve lose control of the personal reasons. What consequently occurs, is the phenomenon of the decline of a ma who is unable to resist or endure to the existing rules in the given circumstances. What’s more, the categories of morality gain different connotations, too. By presenting such evidence in regards to personal struggles and challenges, one shall note that inductive reasoning shifts from one topic to the other by presenting the personal challenges, which occur on the daily basis. What catches attention of the audience in this regard is the fact how the story of the war that might appear to be rather general for all from the first sight transforms into the concept, which brings an individual to the center of the changes, and transformations that are being born in the course of those events.

The deductive reasoning in this regard deals with the impossibility to accept the fact of those challenges by an individual. In other words, the issue that first appears to be personal for the author grows into the general question for every person.

The rhetorical strategy concludes with the tasks of a writer in dealing with such cases. Namely, voices that are being conveyed in the literature best reflect the state of the society which might be wounded by different types of circumstances which in this case are mainly motivated by the war. Thus, the rhetorical structure plays a role of the took which unites the universality of the issues.