Is The Purpose Of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech

Five minutes. Dr. King was allowed five minutes to speak his mind. With time ticking, King presented his speech until a crowd member shouted, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin!” The dream. The dream of which his advisor specifically warned not to bring up. Five minutes soon turned to eight then twelve and finally ends at sixteen minutes. Sixteen minutes, in just sixteen minutes, King delivers the greatest speech of the twentieth century. (Martin Luther King: The Story Behind His ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech). On the blazing summer afternoon of the twenty-eighth of August 1963, American civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his I Have a Dream speech in hopes to end racism in the United States and to promote civil and economic rights.

King utilizes in addition to parallelism is his use of metaphors all throughout his speech. King uses metaphor in a way to pose an idea and even an argument against any opposing forces in the crowd. As he begins his speech, King refers to president Abraham Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. He says, “This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity” (King). In this example of a metaphor, King compares “great beacon light of hope” to the Emancipation Proclamation, “seared in the flames of withering injustice” to the pain and suffering of injustice, and “joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity” to symbolize the light of freedom to their long dark night of enslavement. In a way, King is trying to convince the audience to finish what others have started for them. He is appealing to the emotions of his audience, he wants them to be angry enough to take actions against this force. This force of injustice in America, between Americans. Martin Luther King goes on to blame the government for not enforcing what has been said in the documents of America. King announces, “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were

Dr. King uses unifying language, allusions, parallelism, and many more strategies to contribute to his writing style. At the very end of his sixteen minute speech, King uses anaphoras, unifying language, and allusion in a couple short but effective sentences. He says, “Let freedom ring. . . But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens,. . . when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro Spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” (King). Dr. King has a way of expressing his emotions within his literature. He is very passionate, and with this passion, he is able to appeal to his audience through pathos. King’s audience should be inspired and moved by the exceptional style and inspirational tone. Inspired enough to join the fight to end racism and fight for equal rights. Dr. Martin Luther King refers to God all throughout the speech. The people of America were very religious by thanking