Martin Luther King Jr Allusion

Martin Luther King Jr. was a crucial part in the civil rights movement. With his leadership skills and non violence protesting is a huge reason he was one of the greatest leaders. Instead of protesting with violence King protested with speeches, and marches. One of his most famous steps to equality is his march on Washington. In his March him and several individuals fought for change in the suffrage of African Americans. During the March King gave a speech, which has became one of the most known speeches in the civil right movements. Martin Luther King Jr. used several Literary elements in this speech. He used elements to connect back to the past, and repeated many phrases to keep it in the audience's memory, these are Allusion and Anaphora.

One element Martin Luther King Jr. included in his speech was allusions. An Allusion is a reference to a statement, person, place, or event in literature. Writers included allusions in their work to show a deeper meaning by referring to another work with a similar theme to emphasize a point. Another reason authors use allusions because it provides listeners with imagery, which then can lead to connections. Throughout Martin Luther King’s speech he included several allusions, which helped make it the speech it is today. One of the allusions he used was “ Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” He used this in the beginning of his speech, which was exactly one hundred years after Abraham Lincoln made his famous speech. He chose to reference the Emancipation Proclamation, because like Lincoln they were both fighting for freedom. With the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln fought for freedom of slaves forever, king reference this to show the history of

Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, sentences, or paragraphs. Anaphora is used to emphasize a point and make the speech catchy. Authors use anaphora mostly in poetry, essays, and formal speeches. To have listeners remember a key point of their work, they might repeat it several times. In Marthin Luther king jr’s speech using anaphoras helped his speech became famously known. One example of an anaphora in the speech is “ Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” This is an anaphora because he repeated the phrase “Now is time.” I think he repeated this phrase to make listeners believe in his speech and ability to fight for blacks rights together. Also because it means that there freedoms will be changing. Another anaphora in the speech is “But one hundred years later, the Negro still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later,