Letter From Birmingham Jail: Ethos, Pathos, Logos.
History in the past provided us with many former activists such as Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King Jr. As a well known activist, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the “Letter From Birmingham Jail”. The long, informal letter was written to address racism which was the situation that caused conflict at the time. In other words, King’s letter was essentially an epistle informing all his critics of the historical importance and necessity of civil disobedience. The letter goes over the happenings in the colored community at Birmingham Jail. It was also wrote in response to eight clergymen defending his actions. Dr. King’s letter is notable for persuasive methods such as ethos, pathos, and logos, which was cited in the text. However, the “Letter From Birmingham Jail” shows a classical application of the Aristotelian method of persuasion that is effective for the clergymen to defend the strategy of nonviolent defiance to racism.
As Martin Luther King writes this letter, he uses a technique of trustworthiness to catch the clergymen’s attention. In the letter, Dr.
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Ethos, a method used to appeal ethics, persuades the clergymen by giving credit to someone for the reader to believe in Dr. King’s plan. The pathos method appeals to an emotion which persuades the clergymen by how their emotions get mixed. The most effective method of persuasion, logos, strongly persuaded the clergymen by getting informed with the assistance of logical facts and reasoning. Overall, the “Letter From Birmingham Jail” displayed a original method to convince the clergymen that was sufficient to defend the strategy of nonviolent defiance to