I thought it might be helpful to show you an example of a speech within a book. What follows is from a book that won the Pulitzer. Michael Shaara's Civil War novel Killer Angels. This scene takes place only 29 pages into the novel. Chamberlain, commander of the 20th Maine regiment (part of the Union Army), has received a consignment of soldiers who have refused to fight. Their regiment was disbanded and mostly sent home, but they had signed longer contracts, and were forced to stay on with the army. They refused transfer to another regiment, mutinied, and eventually, ended up Chamberlain's problem simply because nobody else wanted them. His orders are explicit. They fight or they get shot. In this scene, moments after getting orders to advance toward the sound of the guns, he addresses them for the first time. It's the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, and he needs every man he can put in line:
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They were silent watching him. Chamberlain began to relax. He had made many speeches and he had a gift for it. He did not know what it was, but when he spoke most men stopped to listen. Fanny said it was something in his voice. He hoped it was there now.
"I've been ordered to take you men with me. I've been told if yuo don't come I can shoot you. Well, you know I won't do that. Not Maine men. I won't shoot any man who doesn't want this fight. Maybe someone else will, but I won't. So that's that."
He paused. There was nothing on their faces to lead him.
"Here's the situation. I've been ordered to take you along, and that's what I'm going to do. Under guard if necessary. But you can have your rifles if you want them. The whole Reb army is up the road a'ways waiting for us and this is no time for an argument like this. I tell you: we sure can use you. We're down below half strength and we need you, no doubt of that. But whether you fight or not is up to you. Whether you come along, well, you're coming."
Tom had come up with his horse. Over the heads of the prisoners Chamberlain could see the regiment falling into line out in the flaming road. He took a deep breath.
"Well, I don't want to preach to you. You know who we are and what we're doing here. But if you're going to fight alongside us there's a few things I want you to know."
He bowed his head, not looking at eyes. He folded his hands together.
"This regiment was formed last fall, back in Maine. There were a thousand of us then. There's not three hundred of us now." He glanced up briefly. "But what is left is choice."
He was embarrassed. He spoke very slowly, staring at the ground. "Some of us volunteered to fight for Union. Some came because we were bored at home and this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many of us came because it was the right thing to do. All of us have seen men die. Most of us never saw a Black man back home. We think on that, too. But freedom. . . It's not just a word. "
He looked up into the sky, over silent faces.
"This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. I don't. . .this hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We're an army out to set other men free."
He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, "This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man is born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land--there's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other."
Once he started talking he broke right through the embarrassment and there was suddenly no longer a barrier there. The words came out of him in a clear river, he he felt himself silent and suspended in the grove listening to himself speak, and he felt the power in him, the power of his cause. For an instant he could see black castles in the air; he could create centuries of screaming, eons of torture. Then he was back in sunlit Pennsylvania. The bugles were blowing and he was done.
He had nothing else to say. No one moved. He felt the embarrassment return. He was suddenly enormously tired. The faces were staring up at him like white stones. Some heads were down. He said, "Didn't mean to preach. Sorry. But I thought. . . you should know who we are. . .This is the army, but you're free as I can make you. Go ahead and talk for a while. If you want your rifles back for this fight you'll have them and nothing else will be said. If you won't join us you'll come along under guard. When this is over I'll do what I can to see you get fair treatment. Now we have to move out."
He stopped, looked at them. The faces showed nothing. He said slowly, "I think if we lose this fight the war will be over. So if you choose to come with us I'll be personally very grateful. Well. We have to move out."
He turned, left silence behind him. Tom came up with the horse. . .His face was shiny red. "My Lawrence, you sure talk pretty."
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All but a few end up joining the 20th after that speech, but Shaara's too deft a writer to leave us with just one view of his theme. Chamberlain later has a conversation with an old, wily Irish sergeant. They've encountered a runaway slave, and are discussing slavery and equality. Chamberlain quotes Shakespeare, saying all men have the same divine spark. They discuss equality and their causes for fighting. Kilrain says he doesn't judge men by race but on an individual basis. What follows is a speech I'll include so that you can compare the techniques Shaara used to bookend and expand his themes without banging them on the nose. Note that Kilrain's talking about something far bigger than "the cause," bigger than the war, yet his thoughts are a natural reaction, even extension, of Chamberlain's earlier speech.
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"Colonel, you're a lovely man." He shook his head. "I see at last a great difference between us, and yet I admire ye, lad. You're an idealist, praise be."
Kilrain rubbed his nose, brooding. "The truth is, Colonel, that there's no divine spark, bless you. There's many a man alive no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you've seen them hang each other in the old country...Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality?
"The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf nor a tree. There's many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I'm Kilrain, and I God damn all gentlemen. I don't know who me father was and I don't give a damn. There's only one aristocracy, and that's right here - " he tapped his white skull with a thick finger - "and YOU, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don't even know it. You are damned good at everything I've seen you do, a lovely soldier, an honest man, and you got a good heart on you too, which is rare in clever men.
"Strange thing. I'm not a clever man meself, but I know it when I run across it. The strange and marvelous thing about you, Colonel darlin', is that you believe in mankind, even preachers, whereas when you've got my great experience of the world you will have learned that good men are rare, much rarer than you think.
"The point is that we have a country here where the past cannot keep a good man in chains, and that's the nature of the war. It's the aristocracy I'm after. All that lovely, plumed stinking chivalry. The people who look at you like a piece of filth, a cockroach, ah." His face twitched to stark bitterness. "I tell you, Colonel, we got to win this war.. . What will happen, do you think, if we lose?"