How Is Allusion Used In Letter To Birmingham

Birmingham, 1963, was characterized by a vicious onslaught of disruptive demonstrations led by the black citizens of Birmingham to fight against the injustice of segregation. Martin Luther King Junior, an avid freedom fighter at the time, heard these warped perspectives and wrote against them in what is known as “A Letter from Birmingham”. Detailed in his letter was his response to the white clergymen of Birmingham, who stated that black people were being disruptive in their demonstrations to fight for justice, and how they were showing hatred, impatience, and violence. Through a disappointed and urgent tone, King uses allusion to relate to biblical events to justify his credibility, appeals to empathy through vivid anecdotes and metaphors to clearly define the injustice, and uses logical reasoning and repetition throughout the letter to justify their

In response to the clergymen stating that he is an outsider with no right to act on the injustice in Birmingham and that the events in Birmingham are only in Birmingham, King states, “Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eight-century prophets left their little villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid,”(Martin Luther King Junior 1), and closes off his reasoning with, “Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outsider agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider,”(King