"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

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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?

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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

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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.

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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?

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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

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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

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

• Ethos

• Pathos

• Logos

• Kyros

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"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.

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