"Farewell to Baseball" - Lou Gehrig

After reading the speech, what is the overall tone?

• grateful and content

• angry and bitter

• sympathetic and kind

• self-deprecating and cold

What evidence from the text conveys the tone?

• Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I

  consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

• Look at these grand men. Which of you

  wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one

  day?

• Also, the builder of

  baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow?

• Which of you

  wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one

  day?

Lou Gehrig uses several rhetorical questions throughout the speech. What is the purpose of this rhetorical device? (Choose 2)

• to encourage the audience to reconsider their misconceptions about his situation

• to encourage the audience to participate in the speech

• to emphasis his message and theme

• to confuse the audience with new information

What is the theme of the speech?

• Despite adversity, you can still appreciate the positive parts of life.

• Anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

• When you work hard, all of your dreams will come true.

• Existence is a futile Kafkaesque, nightmare.

What evidence supports the theme?

• I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but

  kindness and encouragement from you fans.

• Sure I’m lucky.

• So, I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot

  to live for.

• Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding

  leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe

  McCarthy?

What is the purpose of Lou Gehrig's speech?

• to express his gratitude to a community that supported him

• to encourage people to play baseball

• to justify why he is retiring

• to explain that he didn't deserve to suffer as he has

What effect does repetition have in the speech?

• to emphasize the importance of the small things

• to remind the audience that he was successful in his career

• to add imagery to the speech

• to insure the word count met requirements

Lou Gehrig mentions that he appreciates some things that might typically seem mundane. Which rhetorical appeals does this employ?

• Ethos

• Pathos

• Logos

• Kyros

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got."

Knowing that Lou Gehrig had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, this statement is an example of which type of irony?

• verbal - understatement

• verbal - overstatement

• situational

• dramatic

"When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that’s something."

Based on context clues, what does the idiom "give your right arm" mean?

• You think something is valuable and would work hard to get it.

• Your right arm is valid legal tender in monetary transactions.

• The thing in question is not valuable to you.