Does Martin Luther King Use Figurative Language In I Have A Dream

I Have A Dream

For one hundred years, the negro community has lived under the repression of the majority of the white people. Negro rights had slowly become abolished and ignored for the benefit of the whites. But one brave African American decided to speak above it all, in one famous speech called “I have a dream”. Martin Luther King successfully uses figurative language because the complex metaphors serve to not only explain the injustices that negroes have gone through, but they touch on the white audiences patriotic tendencies from a nonviolent standpoint

King’s use of elaborate extended metaphors is effective because it translates the many repeated complaints of black people who have been oppressed, for metaphors that express the same meanings in a fresh, profound way. “One hundred years later , the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” (Paragraph 3). This quote explains in a new, elegant manner how from the day that the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, racial hatred still persisted. How the Negro community felt imprisoned in their own homes, their own land because of the white community. This metaphor is more helpful because it instantly gives an image which can only be described with words like pain and suffering.

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King decided that promoting more violence would have done no good and just initiated more racial separation. His speech revolved around the idea of justice and peace. Doing this helped his point.“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred” By this, King explains that even though African Americans are eager to gain their true and rightful independence, violence is not the way to achieve it. This would only put them on the same side as their aggressors, slowing down the process of