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Atticus Finch Speech Analysis

Satisfactory Essays

Martin Luther King and Atticus Finch’s compelling words

Atticus Finch from the book To Kill a Mockingbird and Martin Luther King are both extremely eloquent speakers who conveyed their messages in such a powerful way that they changed history. They are superb speakers due to the way they arrange their words and how effectively it pertains to their arguments. For example, Atticus, a respectable lawyer in Maycomb County, Alabama, used a certain dialect to persuade the jury into believing him by understanding and applying tricks to make his audience feel ashamed and guilty over the case of an innocent black man, Tom Robinson. His culpable tone played a major role in causing the racist, corrupt town of Maycomb to process and remember Atticus’s words and know deep down that categorizing people based on their skin color, ethnicity, or religion is not God like. Atticus and Mr. King are courageous men who are both in support of equal rights. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech takes place during the 1960’s, within close proximity to when To Kill a Mockingbird is published. Something needed to be done, and these honorable men knew they had to use their experiences and high positions, convincing and realistic evidence, and intelligence to manipulate their audience’s emotions to challenge their opinions or strong feelings on the overall issue, racism. Atticus Finch and
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Martin Luther King both use rhetorical devices including ethos, pathos, and logos effectively to persuade their audience that racism is wrong. In order to understand the credibility of Martin Luther King, one must look into his background. He was a preacher who was arrested and tormented throughout his life, yet still stood up as one of the most noble and influential African American leaders of all time. Because he personally experienced the inequality for himself, the people he addresses can all relate to him, or at least sympathize with him. Not only that, Mr. King also uses the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitution to support his opinions, which as an American would be degrading to our country to ignore. For example, Mr. King refers to starting some of his sentences as “100 years later" as a reference to President

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