Rhetorical Analysis: To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

In the past, and even to this day, racism was one of the biggest problems in our society. Throughout history, there were attempts to alleviate inequality. Among these were the Civil Rights Movement and the publication of the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, activists, including Martin Luther King, fought for justice in America. In To Kill a Mockingbird, topics like stereotypes and inequality are mentioned in Atticus Finch’s Closing Argument. Both King and Finch create a persuasive case to overcome racism through the use of logos, ethos, and pathos.

One of the first things that King and Finch use to increase the effectiveness of their speeches is logical appeals, or logos. Logos is valuable. They are facts, so they are not debatable. They are the truth. In Martin Luther King’s Detroit “I Have a Dream” Speech, he uses logos in the sentence, “I have a dream this afternoon that there will be a day when we will no longer face the atrocities that Emmett Till had to face or Medgar Evers had to face.” Emmett Till

King uses pathos in this statement, ”I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children, that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within.” By saying this, King reminds his audience that small children are affected by racism. The audience receives a reminder that the innocent and harmless are being victims to prejudice. In Atticus’s closing argument, he says, “There is not one person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.” Finch points out that these stereotypes, which are usually applied to the African Americans, can be applied to everyone. He appeals to his audience’s conscience by mentioning something that they can all relate