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Coretta Scott King The Death Penalty Is A Step Back Analysis

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Death penalty or capital punishment is a legal procedure carried out by the government of a state which sentences a convicted person to death. Capital punishment has been a matter of controversy in various countries for decades now. In this essay, Coretta Scott King talks about why she is against the death penalty. The main purpose of this critique is to focus on King’s arguments and evaluate their authenticity and credibility.
In the essay “The Death Penalty Is a Step Back” the author, Coretta Scott King expresses her feelings about capital punishment and states reasons to back up her argument that the death penalty is both a racist and immoral practice. King believes that capital punishment is immoral and illegal, and that it by no means serves as a deterrent for other possible criminals. The author then further talks about how there have been numerous incidents where the mistakenly convicted is put down in the name of American justice. King then argues that by sentencing someone to death, one is assuming that the person convicted is not capable of rehabilitation. The …show more content…

She does so by presenting a rhetorical question in the beginning: “Can we expect a decent society if the state is allowed to kill its own people?” (para.2). In the attempt of doing so, she heightens the emotional impact it would have on her readers, which in turn makes the readers question the positive beliefs they might have held about the American government. In the fourth paragraph of this essay, King draws the interest of her readers to the text by talking about her personal experiences relating to the issue of capital punishment. She does so in order for the readers to come to an agreement with her main purpose and that is to present them with the fact that the American government’s actions to legitimize murder as a way of dealing with violence is a step forward in the wrong

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Editor Anna Quindlen wrote many articles and essays conveying her opinion toward the death penalty. Such as, “Death Penalty Fails to Equal Retribution” and “Public & Private; The High Cost of Death”. Although Anna Quindlen makes many valuable accusations regarding her reasoning to being opposed to the death penalty, she undermines the real purpose of the penalty itself. The Death penalty, is indeed necessary. Many of the accusations Anna proclaims permit to the emotions of the victims families that have been robbed of their loved one by the said killer.

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He does this by using lines such as “When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim”. By using this kind of incendiary language and sentence structure he lets the audience envision how horrible it would be to see this happening to you or your own friends. Through the emotions he provokes, King is able to pursue the reader to hear what he has to say about these outrage of acts. King asserts negotiation is the best way to resolve problems, but when it was not an option on the table, he obliges to confront injustices using nonviolent direct action. He emphasized “the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.

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He shows that everyone’s “human life is a very special possession given by God to man and that no one has the right to take it for any reason or for any cause, however just it may be.” He harkens back to his dedication of the article to Dr. King, through as Dr. King was assassinated. Showing this, he leans towards suggesting that violence caused Dr. King’s death. By having the audience feel distraught over the death of Dr. King, which he says was caused by violence, he can connect more people into the belief of peaceful

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By doing this we see King take a position of calmness and understanding, rather than aggressive and attacking. This correlation of a perspective justice leading to injustice, is a prominent feature throughout history, which makes King’s claim transcend not only the original audience, but time as well. I fully support King’s claims, especially when looking at the world he describes, while comparing it to now and seeing how little certain things have changed. Summary:

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