ipl-logo

Figurative Language In Letter From Birmingham Jail

688 Words3 Pages

In King’s letter, he states, “We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.” Funny thing is he had lots of time to think about and write this letter. He wanted this letter to encourage and bring up a people that will start a revolution. He needed something, that special something, that would ignite the fire that had somehow died out. His Letter from Birmingham Jail was the match. King uses tone, literal and figurative language to establish structure and language in his letter. King’s use of tone in his letter was a great way to lay out the foundation of his letter and add structure. In paragraph 2 and 3, King explains in the “hard, brutal and unbelievable facts” of the actions taken toward blacks …show more content…

King says “Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.” The literal language in that sentence is “Now is the time”. That means that now is the time to take action. The figurative language is “from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.” This doesn’t mean everyone’s drowning in quicksand. King means that racial injustice is bringing everyone involved down. He wants thinks to change and to pull ourselves up onto “the solid rock of human dignity.” Another example is when King says, “Like a boil that can’t be cured as long as it is covered up, but must be exposed for healing, racial injustice must also be exposed.” The literal language is the exposure. He wants to expose racial injustice as the monster it really is. He wants to bring awareness to it, so that we can take it down. The figurative language “Like a boil that can’t be cured as long as it is covered up” is referring to racial injustice. King decided it was covered up long enough and must be exposed in order to fix the situation. From the examples we can see that King understood the fact that structure and language matter, especially with so great a cause as his. Structure gives your writings a base to stand on, and language is basically the four walls of the house. Just try it! Use good structure and language in your essays and at home and your teacher can’t help

Show More
Related
562 Words | 3 Pages

In A letter from Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King Jr writes to the clergy men and his supporters as “A Call for Unity”. King had been put under arrest from partaking in a peaceful march against segregation on property that he did not have permission to be marching on. In the 1960’s segregation laws and policies were under the Jim Crow regulations; separate racial schools, colored-only bathrooms, separate places for the colored to eat and they would have to sit in the back of the bus. The letter King wrote was critical because he reaches out to the Clergymen from Birmingham Prison and uses the rhetorical appeal of his own character to establish his credibility on the subject of racial discrimination and injustice.

Read More
1132 Words | 5 Pages

King just wants to see the “immoral end of flagrant racial injustice” (paragraph 3, King) he has stated this often throughout his whole letter to his fellow clergymen. I feel that he states this as kind of a statement that he will not stop till eventually they are free of racial injustice. Throughout his letter he uses a lot of different word choice, some of this helps him create imagery to explain more in depth. He uses his imagery to compel the reader into listening. Some examples of his imagery would be when he stated: “Before the pen of Thomas Jefferson etched across the pages of history…we were here” (paragraph 1, King)

Read More
1546 Words | 7 Pages

When responding to the eight white clergymen, he states, “Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas,” giving the reader the notion that a plethora of criticism must come across his desk. But, he has chosen to write a response and explain himself simply because King feels they are “men of genuine good will” and their criticism is “sincerely set forth.” After the introduction of his letter, he feels he must next explain his location at the time: Birmingham Jail. “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here,” says King. This quote lets the reader know there is a reason behind King’s arrest, a very good reason, too.

Read More
876 Words | 4 Pages

The Letter from Birmingham Jail and the I have a Dream Speech, both written by Martin Luther King Jr., explain the same message to people in two different ways. The Letter from Birmingham Jail was to write a letter to defend the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. He wrote this because he wants African Americans to come together and peacefully protest the unjust laws that are in place. On the other hand, his speech was to a large group of citizens, black and white, fighting for freedom, equality, justice and love. He used many rhetorical devices in his speech and letter that compared the two, and to show the differences in a clear way.

Read More
866 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the text, King utilized the values of his audience to gain sympathy and later on support. His use of diction and syntax would align his mission to God’s, and show that he was in the right and the clergymen were in the wrong. In his letter, King effectively used an extended periodic sentence that consisted of more than 300 words. The sentence has an extreme appeal to pathos, with such vivid imagery

Read More
251 Words | 2 Pages

We live in a world with currently many conflicts from the racial disparity in high incarceration rates to gun violence and the war over gun rights. In his letter, King describes that Black Americans have no identity and that the oppressed cannot remain oppressed forever. King implies that they cannot be told to “wait for justice” because if they simply

Read More
1306 Words | 6 Pages

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the letter from jail, after he got arrested during a peaceful protest. At the time segregation was still a part of the culture in the United States and Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers were working diligently and peacefully to try and make a change in people’s hearts about segregation. In this letter MLK Jr. is writing to defend his strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism, which he does effectively by using rhetoric. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference focused on Birmingham, Alabama to start a nonviolent direct action campaign with the goal to get the city to get rid of segregation laws.

Read More
907 Words | 4 Pages

In terms of legacies, Martin Luther King Jr. is an example of someone whose legacy has left an impact on a great many fields. The first to come to mind for most would be civil rights activism, as he was an instrumental figure in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. However, Martin Luther King Jr is an extremely influential figure in the field of oration and rhetoric. His Letter from Birmingham Jail is a work that he wrote while incarcerated in the Birmingham City Jail in response to criticism from Alabama clergymen. This letter is a prime example of King’s expertise in constructing persuasive rhetoric that appealed to the masses at large.

Read More
452 Words | 2 Pages

1. Ethos, Logos, and Pathos are important aspects in Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. The meaning behind Ethos is to appeal to ethics, which means convincing readers of the author’s credibility, meanwhile Pathos is an appeal to emotion, and is used in literature to convince readers of an argument by getting their emotions involved. Last but not least, Logos is the appeal to logic and is used to persuade readers using a force of reason. These terms are important in MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail because the foundation of the letter is built upon ideas of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

Read More
1013 Words | 5 Pages

He places the strong authority of the declaration on his side to show how the American people are in contradiction to their own “sacred obligation” and the Negros have gotten a “bad check.” A metaphor representing the unfulfilled promise of human rights for the African Americans. King skillfully evokes an emotional response from all races with the use of religion: “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” By doing this he finds a common ground that brings black and whites closer with a common belief in God they share, as well as the mention of

Read More
466 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
413 Words | 2 Pages

Wyatt Erovick AP English 12-6-16 Letter From a Birmingham Jail Analysis         Luther King Jr., in his letter, Letter From a Birmingham Jail, uses persuasive techniques to grab the reader’s attention and get them to agree with him.     In King’s 13 and 14th paragraph of the letter, he uses a logical appeal to persuade the audience. In the beginning of paragraph 14, King states that “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.”  

Read More
806 Words | 4 Pages

Racism in America has been around for centuries however it was in the 1960's that the attitudes of many Black Americans started to quickly change and they realized they wanted equality. Out of this, The Civil Rights Movement emerged which was a peaceful social movement that strove for equal human rights for black Americans. The leader of the Civil Rights Movement is no one other than Martin Luther King Jr. In his book, Why We Can't Wait, King tries to convince Black Americans to realize their reality, remember their roots and important and mainly, to seek changes to social conditions and attitudes.

Read More
730 Words | 3 Pages

“...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.

Read More
1111 Words | 5 Pages

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

Read More

More about Figurative Language In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Related Topics

Open Document