Perhaps the saddest thing that can ever happen to any friendship is to acknowledge a friend’s death. However, in 1968, when the death of Martin Luther King shocks the world, Robert Kennedy has to quickly control his hopelessness of losing a close friend and release the depressing news of a freedom fighter’s fall. In a chaotic time with intense racism and unstable society, Robert Kennedy’s speech successfully pacifies the world and reduces the possible conflicts with his deliberate use of a powerful speech that unified the world and at the same time remember Martin Luther King’s achievement. In Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy effectively uses ethos, pathos, and parallelism to create strong bonds of unity as Americans and encourage …show more content…
This point is evidenced in the following quote: “I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.” As a person who has also suffered from the distorting pain of losing a family member, Robert Kennedy moves the audience to believe him and sees him as part of them for they have the similar experience. The use of ethos brings Robert Kennedy to get close with the audience and gets stronger attention from them. Also included in this speech, pathos reveals the essence of the emotion appeal and the value in Robert Kennedy’s that: “we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.” Using words such as “stain” and “bloodshed” gives the audience the feeling of the cruelty in violence; on the contrary, “compassion” and “love” are the words to suggest the bright side of the