Death Penalty Rhetorical Analysis

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In Coretta Scott King’s essay, “The Death Penalty is a Step Back”, the readers are shown the author's view of the death penalty and how she supports this stance by using the three rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos, to draw the reader in to her paper. In King’s essay she supports her viewpoint through different appeals and one of the harder ones to observe that she executed beautifully was the rhetorical appeal of ethos. Now by the nature of ethos it is hard to highlight exactly where it is found and it is more of the underlining of the entire article and background information it is applied to. A significant portion of trustworthy ethos we can find in this piece comes from knowing who the author is and how that feeds into the writing. Now Mrs. King was many things, among these things are: Gandhi peace prize …show more content…

Pathos helps us to connect to the world and works of any medium around us. To point out general ways King uses pathos in her writing is the impactful word choice and figurative language you can find in this piece. Some word choices that pack a punch in Kings paper are “legalized murder” and “murdering murders” (King, par. 1&5). King could have used more mild words but instead she choose these with a purpose to grab the reader's attention and cause them to be jarred enough to think more deeply about what these words are referring to. Creative figurative language you can find at the end of the piece that cause the reader to think is when she ends her paper with the call to attention of “break the chain of violent reaction is to practice nonviolence as individual and collectively through our laws and institutions” (King, par. 6). With ending on this note it makes the readers feel that they are personally responsible and that, if they care enough, they can help this

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