A Whisper on Aids

REED,Sarah

Period 3 AP Language

March 1st, 2006

A Whisper on Aids

AIDS has taken over many millions of peoples lives and Mary Fisher is one of them. A Whisper on Aids is a very inspiring speech by Mary Fisher. She brings out her emotions and her true feelings of what she believes the American people think about AIDS. She conveys her message from her didactic and preaching tone, her creative syntax, and her realistic examples.

Fisher starts out in a very preaching tone. She shortly states “I want your attention, not your applause” (paragraph 1). She is now coming out to the world to preach about her own experience not for sympathy but to teach them what it is all about. She just hopes for them to listen to her and to know the dangers and risks of AIDS. Then, she begins a more didactic tone when really getting into the issue. She states “AIDS is the third leading killer of young adult Americans today” (paragraph 5). She is trying to teach the American people how serious this issue is and how it will only get worse if people do not do anything. This didactic mode really helps the audience know what AIDS is really about and the statistics make the audience become more interested. The volta changes again back to preaching. Fisher requests “My call to you, my party, is to take a public stand…” (Paragraph 7). She wants the people as a whole to take a stand and make a difference. The preaching tone really helps the audience to get into the issue and relate and want to contribute to make a difference. Nearing the end, she gets into a more emotional tone. She brings her children into it, her “son Max will take the measure of his mother…Zachary, now two, will sort through his memories” (paragraph 16). This more emotional tone really appeals the audience in a pathos way and makes then really feel the compassion for Fisher and her subject of AIDS. The changing tone throughout this speech keeps the audience focused on the issue and really helps them to know what she is trying to convey in her speech.

The syntax in this speech is diverse and helps the audience to stay focused in her deliverance. In the second paragraph she makes a statement “Two hundred thousand Americans are dead or dying” followed by this spatial sentence “A million more are infected. World wide, forty million, or a hundred million infections will be counted in the coming years.” This short fact prepares the audience for the following facts about AIDS to draw more attention to the subject. She asks many rhetorical questions throughout as well. For example, she asks “Are you Human?” (paragraph 6). The audience really has to think about what she is asking, because of course the