Rhetorical Analysis Of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech

“The time is always right to do what is right.”
--Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1960s, Dr. King started a movement to fight the racial injustice and segregation that he grew up facing. He campaigned all throughout the South, fighting for the rights of those Americans who have been wrongfully marginalized. At the zenith of his campaign, he gave his most famous speech, the “I Have a Dream” speech. The speech was immensely powerful and impactful, partly because of his use of rhetorical techniques.As he comes toward the crux of the issue in his speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. makes use of vivid literary devices like meaningful allusions and deft metaphorical language to punctuate his argument that unalienable human rights are being unnecessarily

For example, Dr. King, aware of his audience’s reverence for early America’s struggle for independence against the British, directly names two of the nation’s most foundational documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He even says, “ When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which... all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Here Dr. King not only invokes the Christian notion that we are all children of God, but he also relates the papers back to his demand for equality. Martin Luther King Jr.’s insightful allusions to historical documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence bring about legitimacy to his argument and create a situation where the opposite view of the white moderate almost seems impossible to defend. How? Dr. King manages to convince his audience that it’s not in our American

King uses metaphors as a way to portray his philosophical messages in a more concrete fashion, making it so that any person can understand and feel inspired by them. He starts this section of his speech out by decisively utilizing the extended metaphor of a “bad check” to help his audience visualize in widespread, laymen terms what it means to have something that is rightfully yours unjustly denied from your possession. To further show the injustice of their current situation, he embodies the culture of acceptance among “Negroes” with the metaphor relating gradualism to a tranquilizing drug and uses it to shatter the belief that time will heal all wounds, implying that time will only make us numb to injustice instead of solving the problem. After explaining the injustices of his day, he then illuminates the possibility for the future by juxtaposing the current situation and the future he seeks through metaphors in two ways. First, he decisively juxtaposes the metaphors a “dark and desolate valley of segregation” and a “sunlit path of racial justice” in order to draw a stark contrast between the American Dream of opportunity and inclusion and the American reality of oppression and exclusion at the time. Then, to emphasize the importance of the issue, he juxtaposing two metaphors- the “quicksands of racial injustice” and the “solid rock of brotherhood”- to describe the effects that come about from the two ways of existing together, Dr. King ultimately favoring