Pathos In Beyond Vietnam

In former Civil Rights Activist, Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech “Beyond Vietnam-- A Time to Break Silence”, he asserts that the war in Vietnam is utterly immoral and has a far negative implication, not only for Vietnam but for the United States as well. In this speech, King uses three main rhetorical devices, in order to strengthen his position on this war. The three main rhetorical devices: ethos, pathos, and logos, are universally considered as the three necessary tools of persuasion in literature.
Ethos is the appeal to credibility or ethics. “Since I am a preacher by calling I suppose it is not surprising that I have major... reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision” (1). As a preacher and a Civil Rights Activist, King appeared trustworth to all of his sporters,

In the beginning of his Beyond Vietnam speech, King recalled that “there were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of society gone mad on war” (6). By using such descriptive language that appeals to one of our five senses, sight, King was able to help the American people paint an image of the jubilant road that the United States was presumptively heading and then crushed, when it became involved with the Vietnam War. Furthermore, King adds that sending US troops to fight the war was not only devastating the hopes of the poor at home, but it is equivalent as “sending their sons their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population” (15). King’s usage of various descriptors provided insightful imagery, which allows his audience to picture as if they were the ones who actually sent their own loved ones to war. Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of appealing to the feeling of pity, anger, and sadness to strengthen and refine his