Rhetorical Analysis

A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take, and Abigail Adams demonstrates this in a letter written to her son John Quincy Adams who is travelling abroad with his father John Adams, Abigail advises her son to take advantage of this opportunity to use his own knowledge and skills to gain wisdom and experience growth in developing his character and beliefs, persuading him to take his first steps to becoming a leader. Adams uses her stature as a mother to advise her son to make his parents and his country proud, while she refers to history and the past in order to invoke a sense of purpose in completing his journey, and in gaining the knowledge and wisdom he needs to grow. Because Adams is a mother, she needs to use a more sensitive approach towards her son to remind him she is his mother, but she is still on his side.

        Throughout her letter, Adams uses her encouraging maternal tone to persuade her son to do the country well. She consistently uses the words “my son”, from the beginning starting off her letter with “my dear son”, to the end. She does this to remind him that although she speaks formally, with persistence and detail, she means well and is coming from the viewpoint of a loving mother who only wants her son to recognize his full potential. In another example of this she writes, “It will be expected of you my son, that, as you are favored with superior advantages under the instructive eye of a tender parent, your improvement should bear some proportion to your advantages”. She reminds him of the high expectations put on him due to his advantages in life, but also reminds him of the support and love he has from his parents as to not make him feel too pressured or abandoned on his journey.

        Abigail Adams alludes to history and the past in order to make her son feel a need to complete his journey, to give him purpose. When she writes, “war, tyranny, and desolation are the scourges of the Almighty and ought no doubt to be deprecated, yet it is your lot, my son, to be an eyewitness of these calamities in your own native land, and at the same time, to owe your existence among a people who have made glorious defense of their invaded liberties, and, who, aided by a generous and powerful ally, with the blessing of heaven, will transmit this inheritance to ages yet unborn”. She alludes to America’s beginnings in becoming an independent country, because she wants to show her son that out of hardship and will, can come something even sweeter and greater than what one could ever imagine. Through her allusion she advises him to be aware of what is happening in the world, and to be grateful that he has the resources to learn from what life has to offer.