When Neil Armstrong climbed down a ladder from Apollo 11 in 1969 and set his foot down on the surface of the moon, he declared famously: “That’s one small step for a man, but a giant leap for mankind.” That statement became almost as iconic as the moon-landing itself, capturing as it did so poignantly how a relatively mundane action could be so vast and historic in its significance. And what made that sentence work so well? It was in its use of antithesis — the bold juxtaposition of contrasting concepts placed next to each other for dramatic or rhetorical effect and carefully balanced within the structure of the sentence. Continue reading
The power of opposites in rhetoric
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