1. On the Mindless Menace of Violence
A Speech by Senator Robert F. Kennedy

2. 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.

3. 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

4. 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

5. Means of Persuasion Robert Kennedy presents a rational argument
He appeals to the audience and persuades them to act with “humane purpose”.
He uses:
emotional language - human beings loved and needed
reason and rhetoric - What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created?
patriotic imagery - Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily … the whole nation is degraded

6. 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

7. Contrasting Imagery
Kennedy makes extensive use of contrasts to unite the audience in peace:
He lists the ‘victims of violence’ as black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown
He reasons that violence is in conflict with the national values of America and the common purpose of the people

8. Sound Devices
Robert Kennedy uses minimal intentional sound devices in this speech
This most important example of sound device:
Mindless Menace of Violence
Alliteration 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

9. 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