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

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In an essay, identify one of Dr. King’s main claims in the text of his “I Have a Dream” speech, analyzing how he develops his ideas and evaluating the effectiveness of his argument. Martin Luther King JR fought for everybody’s rights. He believed in harmony amongst us all. He wanted to have an unimaginable effect on people. He makes some very reasonable and sagacious points in his speech, that all come down to one thing; equality. King talks about how the time is now, how nobody has time to just stay still and cool off. He reinforces the idea of how long they have waited to gain rights, to gain true freedom. The American Dream could all be changed, if we all would work together. All king wanted for people to see was how foolish we were all acting towards eachother, and how foolish it would be for us to wait for things to get better. You cannot just have hope, you have to act on it. One of his major claims in his speech consists of him talking about the time is now. He claims that the no time to engage in cooling off, or to wait until things …show more content…

King is saying if people don’t wake up and realize that the time is now to make a change, then everybody will be affected and everybody will go down as a nation. It would go against the “American Dream” which is the belief that everybody, no matter what class they were born into or where they were born can keep their own version of success in society which upward mobility is possible for everybody in this country. He says that it would go against the idea of the American dream of freedom and racial harmony that is was supposed to be 200 years ago. King is saying that 1963 is not an end, but a beginning for change and they will not stop enforcing this until there is a invigorating autumn of freedom and

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King wants the audience to remember that segregation is not okay and that in order for things to be different something “ can and will be changed.” King uses repetition to make his audience comprehend and listen to what he has to say. King instructs the audience to “go back” to the states and “go back” to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, as an example to spark their memory of our history and encourage them to take action. King also uses phrases such as “we can never be satisfied” and “we refuse to believe '' to show how America has wronged its people and must keep its promises in order for trust to be established. King repeated the phrase “now is the time” to show what he thinks America should be built on.

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