On the Mindless Menace of ViolenceA Speech by Senator Robert F. Kennedy

Context• This speech was given on April 5, 1968 at the

City Club of Cleveland by Senator Robert Kennedy the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated

• This was during the Black Civil Rights movement and Robert Kennedy’s campaign for presidency

• Robert Kennedy was committed to civil rights enforcement and sympathised with Martin Luther King.

Purpose• The speech was designed to calm a racially-

mixed audience and prevent an aggressive response

• Kennedy does not directly address King’s assassination but addresses the racial violence present in 1960’s America

• This speech calls for understanding and breaking of ‘false distinctions’ between brothers and the cessation of violence

Structure• The speech has a logical structure• Kennedy presents his points eloquently

reaching a climactic paragraph:When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother , when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered .  R. F. Kennedy

Means of Persuasion• Robert Kennedy presents a rational argument • He appeals to the audience and persuades them

to act with “humane purpose”.• He uses:

o emotional language - human beings loved and needed o reason and rhetoric - What has violence ever

accomplished? What has it ever created? o patriotic imagery - Whenever any American's life is

taken by another American unnecessarily … the whole nation is degraded

Imagery• Kennedy uses his political vocabulary mixing

terms like alien, relations, programs, justice and law with colloquial language such as swagger and bluster and Biblical terms scapegoat and martyr

• Kennedy employs metaphor “violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night” and generalisation to express the severity of the situation

Contrasting Imagery• Kennedy makes extensive use of contrasts to

unite the audience in peace:oHe lists the ‘victims of violence’ as black and

white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown

oHe reasons that violence is in conflict with the national values of America and the common purpose of the people

Sound Devices• Robert Kennedy uses minimal intentional

sound devices in this speech• This most important example of sound device:

Mindless Menace of ViolenceAlliteration and Sibilance

• Kennedy also makes use of repetition of the word common to collectivise the audience under common afflictions and provide a common solution to their problems

Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds  among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. R. F. Kennedy