Question

read the excerpt from ronald reagans \tear down this wall\ speech.
where four decades ago there was rubble, today in west berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in germany—busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of park land. where a citys culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. where there was want, today theres abundance.
which statement best explains the use of rhetoric in this paragraph?
○ reagan uses repetition to focus attention on history.
○ reagan uses hasty generalizations to encourage hope.
○ reagan uses parallelism to compare the past to the present.
○ reagan uses hyperbole to emphasize changes that have taken place.

Explanation:

The excerpt uses the repeated structure "Where [past condition], today [present condition]" for three distinct comparisons of West Berlin's state. This structural repetition is parallelism, which clearly contrasts the past and present. Repetition here is not focused on history broadly, hasty generalizations are not present, and hyperbole (exaggeration) is not used—descriptions are factual contrasts.

Answer:

C. Reagan uses parallelism to compare the past to the present.