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1. Analysis. The diction President Bush uses to describe Americans and those killed or injured
during the attacks contrasts sharply with the diction he uses to describe the acts themselves.
Analyze the rhetorical strategies he uses to characterize each, and explain how both George W. Bush
characterizations serve his purpose.
2. Argument. In her 2003 essay “Fixed Opinions, Or the Hinge of History,” published in the
New York Review of Books, writer Joan Didion described her reaction to the aftermath of the
9/11 attacks. A New Yorker herself, she described 9/11 as “a single irreducible image” that
encapsulated “the complicated arrangements and misarrangements of the last century.” She
wrote of her surprise that few people, shortly after the attacks, seemed interested in truly
understanding the event. “On the contrary,” she wrote,
I found that what had happened was being processed, obscured, systematically leached
of history and so of meaning, finally rendered less readable than it had seemed on the
morning it happened. As if overnight, the irreconcilable event had been made manageable,
reduced to the sentimental, to . . . repeated pieties that would come to seem in some ways
as destructive as the event itself. We now had “the loved ones,” we had “the families,” we
had “the heroes.”
To what extent does the rhetoric of Bush’s speech clash with Didion’s view of the atmosphere
in America shortly after 9/11? Cite specific examples from the speech to support your
response. For a challenge, research more writing about the event and revise your response to
include additional evidence to support your position.
3. Argument. In a 2008 interview for The Globe and Mail, Scott Reid, a former communications
director for Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, stated that, in the wake of a tragedy, the
public doesn’t want to hear from a politician but from “a person. A father. A mother. A sister.
A brother.” In speaking of Bush’s responses to the 9/11 attacks in particular, he said, “He
struck a chord with Americans. He was real . . . Mr. Bush got it right in those early days.” Do
you think that this speech conveys a personal rather than a political response to 9/11? Are the
two mutually exclusive? Explain, using evidence from the speech to support your position.
4. Research. How have other politicians responded in the wake of tragedies? Explore speeches
by other political leaders throughout history and choose one to compare and contrast with
Bush’s. What rhetorical strategies do both speeches use to achieve their purpose? What
factors account for the rhetorical differences between the speeches? Some options for
research include President Johnson’s 1968 speech in response to the assassination of Senator
Robert F. Kennedy, President Reagan’s 1986 speech following the explosion of the Challenger
space shuttle, President Clinton’s 1995 speech in response to the Oklahoma City bombing,
President Obama’s 2011 speech at the memorial service for victims after the Tucson shooting,
or President Trump’s 2018 speech in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting.
5. Research. The president thanks the world leaders who had called him with condolences and
offers of support, and many countries reached out in other meaningful ways. Along with the
Americans who were killed, people from over seventy foreign countries also died as a result
of the attacks that day. Research some of the ways other countries reached out to the United
States or otherwise responded, and write an essay classifying two of the types of reactions.
6. Speaking and Listening. September 11, 2001 is one of those historic moments so shocking
and horrific that most people who were alive easily remember where they were and what
they were doing the moment they heard the news. Ask family members or acquaintances
who are old enough to remember that morning about their memories, and write a report
that synthesizes their responses to draw a conclusion about the place such events have in
America’s collective memory.
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