Hidden Yet Effective Rhetoric Of Martin Luther King

Hidden yet Effective Rhetoric

In his peaceful war against segregation laws, Martin Luther King Jr. uses several rhetorical techniques to support his argument. Metaphors and repetition are two of the numerous techniques used to emotionally affect his audience, the racist government and church members accusing King’s demonstrations being “unwise and untimely”.

Parallel structure is used to illustrate an antithesis in the first paragraph “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” which answers the opposition’s argument that what is being done is unwise and untimely. Because the parallel structure addresses both of the groups in Kings argument, the government(the oppressor) and African Americans(the

First, a metaphor; “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait”.” by using the phrase “stinging darts” King emphasizes how detrimental and painful living with segregation laws is. King knows that by just saying it is painful, his audience is not going to believe it is. So, he converts the “stinging darts” into words and throws them at his audience. Throwing in a sense that he uses a lengthy sentence and throws those “stinging darts” one after another as routine events an African American has to endure. As the reader reads the sentence, it takes a toll on them and gives them a hint of the stress an African American feels because of these segregation

To increase the strain on his audience, King uses repetition and inserts “when you”s before every “stinging dart”(routine event). The “when”s are placed to lead to a “then” which completes the answer as to why no more wait “then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait”. The order of the stinging darts also plays a major role in making the argument effective. King orders the darts in a chronological order. Going from events happening to an African American as a child “when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers” to as an adult “when you have to concoct an answer for a five- year- old son” to routine “when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored””. This sequence of chronological events leads his to audience to see the sufferings of a black child to an adult and by using “you” before every event, the audience becomes that black child and adult. And by becoming a black person, figuratively, his audience understands the flaws in the laws of