Martin Luther King Jr. was a revolutionary civil rights leader during the 1950s and 1960s. He protested and fought for the equality that African Americans did not have in the United States. Eloquent, powerful speeches were at the forefront of his leadership, and “I Have a Dream” models that perfectly. His purpose in delivering this speech was to instill hope for the future of African Americans and condemn inequality in America. To accomplish this, he used a multitude of nuanced diction and syntax to build Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. At the beginning of King’s monumental speech, he acknowledges the setting surrounding himself and the hundreds of thousands of people in the crowd. They are at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring former president Abraham Lincoln, “in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,” as King describes in the second line of the second paragraph. The word “shadow” suggests that their actions as civil rights activists succeeded Lincoln’s actions. An important characteristic of his …show more content…
“We will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day,” King tell’s his followers. The anaphora builds upon the multitude of freedoms African Americans will experience with each clause. The future he imagines for the U.S. conveys his idealistic view of what the world could be. There is no shortage of rights, nothing they cannot do. In his mind, change is inevitable. Equality is inevitable. Freedom is the inevitable. This creates a hopeful mood, and listeners have no choice but to feel uplifted at the prospect of a brighter future. Not only does the mood make them hopeful, it makes them truly believe that this dream is possible. The equality that generations upon generations of Black people have laid down their lives for can finally come to