Comparing the Speeches of Mark Antony and Robert
F. Kennedy
by Lillian Bonar
Essay: Comparing the Speeches of Mark Antony and Robert F. Kennedy
Pages: 11
Rating: 3 stars
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Giving a successful speech, in any language, is a difficult yet gratifying skill. Great speeches can be inspiring,
compelling, and even revolutionary – indeed, these speeches are deliberate, succinct, engaging, and
unforgettable. Two examples of such great speeches in both literature and in history are Mark Antony’s eulogy in
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Robert F. Kennedy’s On the Death of Martin Luther King. Through the speakers’
use of parallel structure, caesuras, and personal references – three stylistic devices and techniques – not only were
both speakers able to embellish their speeches, it also allowed each speaker to deliver an even more powerful
speech. In these speeches, the use of repetition through the anaphoral and epiphoral structure in both speeches
accentuates the purpose of the speech, while the use of caesuras adds texture and tone to the speech, and the use
of personal references engages and stimulates the audience.
Mark Antony’s speech, whose aim is to counter Brutus’ speech, enlightens the crowd on the unjust murder of
Caesar. Though he never directly communicates to the crowd of his feeling towards the conspirators, Antony was
able to effectively convey to the crowd, through the use of verbal irony and other stylistic devices/techniques in
his speech, his true views of the assassination. Moreover, Antony was able to shrewdly emphasize his belief of the
undeserved assassination of Caesar through the wide use of epiphoral and anaphoral structure in his speech.
Antony emphasizes the wrongdoings of Brutus and Cassius through the ingenious use of the epistrophe along
with verbal irony as he notes that “I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong” (III, ii, 125). Moreover, he stresses
the importance of punishi...
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