Gettysburg Address – Lincoln’s rhetoric and Utopia

When we talk about the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln’s iconic beard or the famous line “government of the people, by the people, for the people” spontaneously enters our mind. Hardly anyone knows that before Lincoln gave his miniature speech, Edward Everett, a renowned orator at the time, delivered his funeral oration which lasted for more than two hours at the ceremony. We cannot help but ask ourselves:

“What are the peculiarities that make Lincoln’s 272-word speech everlasting in the mind of people like being engraved in a memorial, while Everett’s oration is transient like footprints on the sand?”

        This essay explores Lincoln’s speech with the aim of answering the above question.

  

我們不孤單

（相片來源： hamper，http://www.morgueFile.com）

客廳有廿年歷史的手掌大幾乎伴著我長大的精工牌時鐘，只剩下的一長一短指針仍略帶熒光的尾巴，嘮叨著我現在只是清晨的四點，叮嚀著我不應這個時間起床，提醒著我是因不小心而從蜜甜的夢中驚醒過來。

在混濁的墨漆一片中勉強睜開眼，靜候眼睛慢慢地適應這片陌生的黑暗時，急不了的，我對自己說。近窗邊我忽爾模糊的瞥見，地上一個穿著黑色大絨毛袍子，留著微微向外捲曲的長髮的巨人影子。室內左上方角落的窗戶是這個充斥著劣等香煙混雜排泄物氣味的濃重空間，與外間世界連接的唯一接口，可惜這接口上了窗花，漫射的月光依照窗花的形狀漫射進來，窗外，一排排整齊的大樹上，鳥兒在「嘀咕嘀咕」的叫，距離遠了點，致分辨不清是何種鳥兒像我一樣忘了睡覺仍在這個時辰嗚叫，但聽那叫聲隱約的感知樹上的不是夜鶯而是鴟鵂，亦沒有帶刺的玫瑰，樹枝間可能藏著鴟鵂剛捕帶餘溫的耗子。