Rhetorical Analysis Essay On Stride Towards Freedom

Dominic Allen
Mrs. Coleman
English II
1 March 2023
STF Analisis
Martin Luther King, Jr. Author of the piece Stride Towards Freedom, moves on through the civil rights movement. Showing the American citizen how to deal with oppression in different ways. He talks about three different ways to deal with oppression. Acquiescence, violence, nonviolent resistances. He does this to inspire action upon people to create change by using nonviolent resistance. King uses rhetorical devices, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, to support his argument.
One of the ways he shows how people deal with oppression is acquiescence. He does that by using ethos, specifically he uses allusions like when he uses the allusions to the Bible and Shakespeare. An allusion he uses is one he regards to Moses. He states, “Almost 2800 years ago Moses set out to lead the children of Israel from slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land. he soon discovered that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers.” He uses this example to show how slaves became “accustomed to being slaves.'' They are so used to being oppressed that they are afraid of change and would rather stay “than flee to others that they know not of.” though this he shows how acquiescence is a poor way of dealing with oppression.

He does that by using pathos, he specifically uses loaded words. The way he uses loaded words creates a strong feeling to show the extent of hurtfulness and destruction of violence. “It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.” This shows the feeling of people who have been destroyed become bitter and that makes the destroyers gain a sense of brutality. People go to violence thinking it is going to fix something, but in the end it “never brings permanent peace.” Violence brings destruction among people, and all it does is tear people