How Did Martin Luther King Jr Use Of Figurative Language

In his 1967 speech on the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr. employs figurative language and syntactical elements to construct his argument against the hypocrisy and cruelty of American involvement in the war.
Martin Luther King, Jr. utilizes figurative to emphasize the inhumanity and immorality of the war. In describing the ways in which the war is detrimental to the American people, King writes that "Vietnam
[continues] to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube" (King). King draws a comparison between the war and an unholy vaccuum while enumerating what the U.S. loses as a result of the war to shed light on the resources and lives that could be better spent improving the U.S. itself as opposed to acting

This simile helps persuade his audience to oppose the war and seek to solve more local and accessible problems. King once again appeals to his audience's values by personifying the U.S. when he writes, "If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam" (King). King compares the U.S. to a person of morality and the war to poison to emphasize the toll he feels the war will take on the U.S. Not only does the war contribute to the death of America's people, he argues, but to the corruption and ultimate death of America's humanity. This personification appeals to his audience's love and pride for the U.S. as well as their interest in morality, prompting them to oppose the terrible events that he felt would destroy America. King's use of figurative language helps him construct an argument against the inhumanity of the war and persuade his audience to take action to bring the American fight for justice back to its own land.
Additionally, King uses syntactical elements to demonstrate the negative impact of the war on

And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago" (King). King's use of parallel structure emphasizes the various ways in which a divisive and destructive war is more unifying for a population that has yet to see justice than living in a supposedly-free country. King repeatedly juxtaposes the brutal yet equal nature of the war with the peaceful society void of justice, just as he did in his "Letter from
Birmingham Jail," in which he emphasized the importance of justice over peace. This continuation of his argument against a society void of both tension and humanity serves as a comparison between the lack of response to the movement for civil rights before the war and the misplaced war for civil rights overseas, prompting his audience to consider more thoroughly why the Vietnamese are prioritized over citizens on
American soil. Similarly, King highlights the people on American soil who are negatively affected by the fight for freedom in a foreign land when he writes, "For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent" (King). King