List 10 figurative language you can find from Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 Announcement of Martin Luther King Jr. speech.
Do this in your blog. Title your post as: Figurative Language in RFK's Speech.
Ladies and
Gentlemen,
I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute
or so this evening, because I have some -- some very sad news for all of you --
Could you lower those signs, please? -- I have some very sad news
for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens,
and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther
King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between
fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult
day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to
ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is
that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled
with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization
-- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred
toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and
to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that
has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and
love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted
to fill with -- be filled with hatred
and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people,
I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of
feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white
man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States.
We have to make
an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult
times.
My favorite poem, my
-- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the
United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence
and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another,
and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country,
whether they be white or whether they be black.
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family
of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it's true -- but more importantly
to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for
understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will
have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, but we --
and we will have difficult times in the
future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness;
and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black
people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality
of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago:
to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let
us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for
our people.
Thank you very much.
