“It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a mill worker’s son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope! Hope in the face of difficulty! Hope in the face of uncertainty! The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.”
President Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope,” 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address
Have you used this sample in your class? If so, please let us know how. What did you discuss? What activities did you do? How did students respond? Comment below!
Rutgers University-Camden 
My students really love this paragraph. The first thing that a student noted was the repetition of the word “hope” – they said that it foregrounds hope as a theme and makes them think about what hope means to them. This idea of engaging the audience was an important theme that my class was keen to talk about. They said that Obama, with every example, seems to place the audience into different situations. When asked why he does that, one student said it is a practice of empathy, which is an important rhetorical strategy. The possible purpose of this paragraph was proposed by one student who said it is meant to “unify the nation.” Other students shared this sentiment, noting the inclusiveness of these words, that they are both universal and personal. The “unify the nation” student noted that “hope” becomes conflated with the people of different and various backgrounds in the country. We can only have hope because of all these different people. Although they enjoyed it, one student mentioned that this paragraph is a little difficult to understand because they feel overwhelmed with emotions and images created by these words. That said, another student was sure to mention the importance of faith. Even if we are confused by his complex sentence (and sometimes because we are confused by them), we are supposed to have faith in the US. And we are meant to believe in Obama.
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