Robert Kennedy gave his heartfelt speech with his remarks on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968 in Indianapolis. In this speech he tried to promote peace over violence to his primarily African American audience. Hia leading appeal was pathos as he read a poem by Aeschylus and spoke about his brother. Kennedy tried to get them to follow along with him by sympathizing with them and bringing up what Martin Luther King spent his life doing, what he died doing. Kennedy said “we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand”. He wanted people to replace everything bad in the country with and passion like King had. Kennedy related with the people by bringing up an act of violence in his own family that he had to deal with. He brought up “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.” He brought that up to let them see that they have a right to be filled with hatred and skepticism they shouldn’t riot over it and ruin the country that King spent his life trying to fix. …show more content…
He read the line “ against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” This quote said that you get wisdom with things that don’t go right. Kennedy was making light in a dark situation. He then went into what our nation needed. After Kennedy stated conditions the United States didn’t need to be in he said “ what we need in the United States in not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another”. He wanted to get across to the audience that no act of violence would help the