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Letter From Birmingham Jail Rhetorical Analysis

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Martin Luther King’s skilled use of rhetorical techniques effectively reveals his purpose. In the text “Letter From Birmingham” Jail and I “Have a Dream” by Dr. King, he shows the audience the cruelty the African American community faces by using logos and pathos. In Martin Luther King’s pieces, he uses examples of logos to distinctly show the viewers what he is trying to convey. As mentioned in the text “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law”. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.” This means that Dr. King does not believe that the segregation …show more content…

King uses pathos in his works to describe the brutality of fighting for the civil rights movement. In the text, it says “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.” This quote means that America failed the African American community, they were promised rights in the Constitution, but America never upheld their promise and never gave them rights. Dr. King uses charged language to relate to the audience by giving the analogy of a bad check and giving listeners an idea or similar experience of someone not keeping their promise or lying. On another account, King says “And if America is to be a great nation, this must be true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.” This quote means that America will never become a great nation without freedom for everyone. Dr. King uses the metaphor of a ring as a rippling effect over the country to show that freedom should be spread across America

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