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Martin Luther king Jr. uses many stylistic elements such as allusion and metaphors to support his evidence and influence your readers. King wanted to give the readers something to think about and he wanted
Martin Luther King uses loaded words to create pathos when he wrote " Letter from Birmingham Jail. " One way he uses loaded words is when he says " vicious mobs lynch your mother's and father's." This creates pathos because lynching implies hanging colored folks. Back then lynching was very common and not a good thing. So when you hear the word lynch it invokes a depressing feeling in you as long as you know what the word means.
Martin Luther King Jr. uses pathos and parallelism frequently throughout “Letters from Birmingham Jail,” to persuade the clergyman to support his actions in the civil rights movement. One example of King’s use of pathos appeals to the audience’s emotions by showing King’s confidence in his endeavors. “I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham; even if our motives are presently misunderstood... Abused and scorned through we may be, our destiny is tied with the destiny of America.” (Page 9)
Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong leader in the Civil Rights movement, the son and grandson of a minister, and one heck of a letter writer. As he sits in a cell of Birmingham Jail in 1963, he responds to criticism from eight white clergymen. Though this letter was intended for the judgemental and condescending men of high faith, his response touched the hearts and minds of the entire U.S. population, then, and for years to come. In his tear-jerking, mind-opening letter, King manages to completely discredit every claim made by the clergymen while keeping a polite and formal tone. Metaphors, allusions, and rhetorical questions are used in the most skillful way to support his argument and ultimately convince his audience of the credibility behind his emotional, yet factual, claims.
The Persona of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King was very influential in both his writings and speeches. King created a reputation for himself that will continue to live on throughout American history. He was inspirational to the point in which he has a holiday devoted to him, he has landmarks in many cities named in his honor, his name is one that every American has heard and knows at least a little bit about. Dr. King is responsible for many great works such as, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “American Dream”. Throughout his work, King has influenced countless people to stop wherever they might find themselves and evaluate their way of living.
These words are positive and put King on a pedal stool. They say that “He stood there smiling, spreading love, until it rolled like a see across the land, sweeping away Jim Crow”. This elevates this mortal man and makes him out to be more than human, as if he’d given everyone their rights, single-handedly.
King’s dialect showed the audience civil right issues, involving many rhetorical strategies using ethos, logos, and pathos, to a racially tempered crowd whom he viewed as different, but not equal. From the very beginning of it , King brings his crowd back to the origin of America when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, that freed all slaves and gave hope to the former slaves. But immediately after Dr. King speaks out on how after 100 years Blacks still do not have the free will that is deserved. He points out the irony of America because Black Americans were still not truly free.
Words can change the world in many ways. Many of those ways can really make an impact on a person’s life or mind set. In the speech “I Have A Dream” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it proved to solidify the peace and fairness that he aimed to gain in this country by ending segregation between black and white people. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. vividly painted his vision of a better future for people of all colors in America.
Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most influential African-American activists in American History and was a key participant in the Civil Rights movement, the goal of which was to provide full civil rights to all rights in America. MLK has written many, many speeches and letters in favor of the Civil Rights movement in America, the most famous of them being his legendary “I Have a Dream” Speech and the monumental “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. To attempt to gain support for his cause, MLK employs the use of emotional appeals, also known as pathos, and logical appeals, also known as logos, which aid to stir emotion and reasoning in the listener. It is more than obvious that MLK tends to tug at the heartstrings of his listeners with his emotionally charged language essential to his success. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. uses more powerful and plentiful examples of pathos in his literature, examples of which being his “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, than logos due to the more powerful emotional connection they carry which can convince his listeners to sympathize with his civil rights movement.
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” and “I Have a Dream” speech he uses many different rhetorical devices. He uses rhetorical devices such as repetition, analogy, and rhetorical questions. In each writing, he uses the devices for many different purposes. These purposes can be similar, or different. In short, Martin Luther King Jr. includes rhetorical devices in his writing.
In 1963, Martin Luther King delivered one of the most influential and impactful speeches in history. King's I Have a Dream speech was consistently powerful assertions of emotional appeals, repetition and paradox. In King’s speech, he utilizes pathos to build a relationship between his black and white audience. This is evident through his references to both black and white children and the history of slavery which appealed to the audience members of the older generation.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an important figure in gaining civil rights throughout the 1960’s and he’s very deserving of that title as seen in both his “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” letter. In both of these writings Dr. King uses logos - logical persuasion - and pathos - emotional appeal - to change the opinions of people who were for segregation and against civil rights. Although King was arrested for a nonviolent protest, he still found a way to justify his actions with the use of logos and pathos. MLK uses both ways to gain the attention and agreement of the audience but, he uses pathos not just more, but in a more relatable way in order to appeal to his audience.
“...when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.” (MLK, 276). King uses this strong sense of appeal to emotion to engross his readers and let them know how hard it is for them.
At the 1963 March on Washington, American Baptist minister and activist Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of his most famous speeches in history on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the height of the African American civil rights movement. King maintains an overall passionate tone throughout the speech, but in the beginning, he projected a more urgent, cautionary, earnest, and reverent tone to set the audience up for his message. Towards the end, his tone becomes more hopeful, optimistic, and uplifting to inspire his audience to listen to his message: take action against racial segregation and discrimination in a peaceful manner. Targeting black and white Americans with Christian beliefs, King exposes the American public to the injustice
Throughout his speech he implies a lot of metaphors to make his speech effective and influencing. For example, King constantly describes the Negroes as being “crippled” by the “manacles of segregation”, “Storms of Persecution,” and “chains of discrimination.” Through these metaphors King indicates the crises the Negroes face. A few of King’s strongest metaphors are his references to prejudice: “the quick sands of racial injustice”, the “heat of oppression”, “the dark and desolate valleys of segregation”, and the “chains of discrimination.” King also indicates the unbearable inequality by creating an image: “the sweltering summer of the negro’s discontent.”