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The Gettysburg Address
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Gettysburg Address, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Remembrance, Commemoration, and Future Action
Throughout his address at Gettysburg, Lincoln weaves together the past, present, and future in order to inspire his audience to action. In the first sentence, he calls the audience to remembrance by summoning the past, specifically the founding of the United States as a nation “conceived in liberty” and “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” This lays the foundation for Lincoln to contrast the past (the nation’s history) with the…
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Life, Death, and Sacrifice
In the first sentence of his address at Gettysburg, Lincoln speaks of the founding of the United States like the birth of a child: the United States is a nation “conceived in liberty” and “brought forth” by “our fathers.” Personifying the nation as a living person allows Lincoln to draw a parallel for the audience between the mortality of the nation alongside the mortality of the soldiers. If human life is fragile and needs to…
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Liberty, Equality, and Freedom
Surprisingly, Lincoln doesn’t speak much about liberty, equality, or freedom in the Gettysburg Address. In fact, each term in this patriotic trifecta occurs only once: Lincoln declares in the first sentence that the United States is a nation “conceived in liberty” and dedicated to the principle that “all men are created equal,” and he concludes by envisioning “a new birth of freedom” in the nation. However, these themes implicitly inform every aspect of the…
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