Have you ever thought about the techniques Martin Luther King Jr. used in his speeches? Or how some are statistics, while others really trigger the emotions in people and touch their hearts? In the famous speech “I Have A Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr, MLK gives a speech to a large crowd of people in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. The famous letter written by Martin Luther King Jr, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was written while MLK was in jail for a public speech, and he writes back to criticism to 8 White Clergymen. King uses logos and pathos in different ways to appeal to different people, in large crowds king uses more pathos to appeal to their feelings to make a change, ut in the letter to a smaller audience he uses …show more content…
While in the letter King talks about why he did what he did, he brings up the fact of the organizations for people and the Christian movement for human rights and how only one single organization is for rights. “We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.” (272 King). King uses this in the letter to the 8 Clergymen because they attacked him for protesting and they were Christian members who worked with him so he wanted to use that fact to make then understand why it was wrong what they did. Although in the letter King used more logos, he did use pathos to help persuade and make the reader understand his perspective. Now, King talks about how they have been promised things, and promised new changes in laws but it just turns into another lie and let down of the African American community. “As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us.” (273 King). King uses this pathos in his letter to shown the men that the broken promise of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights promised another ‘broken promise’. He uses this to appeal to their emotions so they understand why he was upset and
Letter from Birmingham City Jail, by Martin Luther King (MLK). MLK wanted to end segregation, but had to try and do it from jail (which was hard enough). He decided to write a letter to the clergymen, telling that all about his experience, views, and what was happening, so they could hopefully help him get equal rights for the blacks. MLK made a claim saying that the whites treated the blacks like they didn’t even matter and even treated them like property. So he decided to take matters into his own hands and get the rights that the blacks deserved, which was to end all of the segregation as peaceful as he could, without anyone getting hurt.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used pathos, ethos, and logos to reach his audience and explain to them the pain that comes from segregation during a difficult time in civil rights history. The letter was written as a response to several critics that were white religious leaders of the South. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. started out by using pathos to connect to the readers emotions. He explained the difficulty that one must go through on a daily basis as a colored individual. For example, Dr. King had to explain to his daughter why she can not go to a new amusement park because it is not opened to those that are colored and she does not understand because of her age and innocence.
Have you ever wonder how Dr Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the best speech in human history and wrote a letter that brings people together? It's because MLK focuses on using Pathos and Logos. The speech and letter that we are comparing are “I have a Dream” and “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, both are written by MLK. “I Have a Dream” MLK wrote for public at the Lincoln Memorial. “Letter From Birmingham Jail” Mlk wrote it to 8 Clergymen in response to criticism.
Letter from Birmingham Jail Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has long been the symbol of racial equality, much impart from the message in this letter. In this letter Dr. King illustrates the methods he became famous for using and the reasons for these methods. He also addressed the concerns about his timing and methods. Dr. King described the process he and his fellow advocates took in addressing the racial injustices as beginning with first defining the injustice and having indisputable evidence of its existence. The next step was confronting law makers and officials about the changes that needed to be made to eradicate the injustice.
Societal unrest in 1960’s United States revealed an alarming need for equality. In Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham Jail, King employs various rhetorical strategies such as anaphora, anecdotes, and the use of the appeals to demand the reader (the clergymen) the need for civil rights and the end of racial discrimination. King is able to convey these needs through a condemning but politeful tone that is admirable given the circumstance of being imprisoned for protesting against racial inequality. With the use of these strategies, King is able to provide a powerful letter that traverses the heart of the reader.
Dr. King uses many examples of the kinds of problems that African-Americans face every day in Birmingham. One of the reasons that this part of the letter is so effective is because of the degree of specificity that Dr. King uses in his examples of the injustices they face. He reminded them of Warren’s own words on the need for desegregation, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” He explains that if you put off justice for a long time, you might forget about it, or you might feel less enthused by action and less strong than you felt before about taking action. Dr. King responds to the disapproval of the timing of public by referring the broader scope of history and declaring that African Americans had waited for these God-given and constitutional rights long enough.
The fight for minority rights in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s was an age of civil disobedience. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the main instigators that made vigorous displays of civil disobedience through peaceful marches, speeches and publications. One of his famous publications was the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” written by MLK to answer and explain his points one segregation to religious figures and critics. This letter was written while MLK was in jail for marching without a permit to which he explains his purpose as the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Additionally the organization was sent an invitation to Birmingham due to raising racial tensions.
It certainly seems that throughout many parts of the letter that King uses the clergymen as a stepping stool to achieve this, whilst still simultaneously castigating them for their earlier remarks against himself. As Leff and Utley said, “This construct allows King to criticize his target without alienating himself from it and also allows the ‘eavesdropping’ black audience to discover a model for reconstructing their own sense of agency” (37). Truly, King shows off his master of wordplay in quite an outstanding way within this
Continuing in his letter King goes on to tell the clergy men they need to take into consideration all the other things that are going on in the South like police brutality, bombing of homes, churches and much more instead of worrying about his protest. By the same token, he states in his letter that he got a chance to sit down with leaders of the economic community to make negations and promises that did not take place for example taking down humiliating signs from stores, but they broke all those promised so King prepared to take direct action which was protesting. Concluding the letter King states “I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership in the
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King, Jr. is responding to criticism of the peaceful protests and sit-in’s that were taking place in Birmingham, which led to his being arrested and the reason that he was in jail. He first responds to the accusation of being an “outsider” by setting the stage for his being in Birmingham due to being invited because of his ties to the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights organization and due to the fact that he is president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Next, Martin Luther King expands on his moral beliefs that there is “injustice” in the way that Birmingham is “the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States”.
Throughout King’s letter he influences the morals of the local clergymen in order to gain the support that is needed in order to change the city for the better. A good example of the clergymen’s ethics being questioned is when King states how the support of the white moderate is crucial to the success of his movement but, due to their lack of aid, the cause had stalled (569). The main goal of the movement was to prove that segregation was unethical and that, even if it wasn’t supported in public, ignoring the problem was even worse than accepting it. If the public remained indecisive and kept ignoring the state of affairs that was in front of them, then nothing would change and the cycle of inequality would just continue even longer. For King to succeed in his mission for equality, he needed to convince as many people as possible that his cause was just and that it would benefit everyone in the long
King’s letter is exceptionally successful because his similes result in solid logos. He uses similes or comparisons to justify his is logic in being in Birmingham and leading desegregation movements. Dr. King uses numerous similes from the bible and other religious comparisons. On the first page he talks about Apostle Paul and how what he is doing in Birmingham is a similar situation. Apostle Paul was spreading the christian word the same way Dr. King was attempting to spread freedom.
Martin Luther King Jr. uses both logical and emotional appeals in order for all his listeners’ to be able to relate and contemplate his speeches. He does an exceptional job using both these appeals throughout his speeches by backing up his emotional appeals with logical ones. Using emotional appeals captures an audience's attention and makes them think about what the narrator is saying. Emotional appeal uses intense words and charged language to grab listeners to get them to keep listening. On the other hand, logical appeals helps to grasp the concept better and provides facts that prove it to be true.
To achieve this, he used rhetorical strategies such as appeal to pathos and repetition. His passionate tone flowed through these strategies, increasing their persuasive power on the people and encouraging them to follow/listen to his message on racial injustice. While pathos elicits an emotional response from the audience to make them more accepting of King’s ideas, repetition structures the speech and emphasizes key ideas for the audience to take away from listening. These two techniques played a crucial role in furthering his purpose and in provoking a powerful response from the audience that made this speech memorable and awe-inspiring. To this day, King’s speech remains one of the most famous and influential speeches in
During the era of the civil rights movements in the 60s, among the segregation, racism, and injustice against the blacks, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial to deliver one of the greatest public speeches for freedom in that decade. In Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech he effectively uses ethos, diction and powerful metaphors to express the brutality endured by African American people. Yet his most important method of reaching his audience, and conveying his enduring message of equality and freedom for the whole nation was his appeal to pathos. With these devices, King was able to move thousands of hearts and inspire the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Opening his speech Martin Luther King Jr. sets up his credibility with his use of ethos, referring to the Declaration of Independence saying, “This note was a promise that all men… would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life.”