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Rhetorical Analysis Of The Letters To Birmingham Prisons

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In “The Letters to Birmingham Prisons,” the author, Martin Luther King, an equal rights activist, highlights many harms of society through his rhetorical strategies. The purpose of this letter was to speak to the primary audience of the clergy, who limits the freedom and independent of some. Martin Luther King when shifts to the secondary audiences of the State and the people. Both audiences are called to act in civil disobedience. When MLK introduces separation of populations, he writes of it as the “disease of segregation.” This rhetoric has a connotative meaning. It goes to suggest segregation and exclusion state with the State and spreads rapidly through the population. This is followed by imagery appealing to hearing. Those excluded bodies hear …show more content…

This address is almost means as a warning. This warning is to correct the unjust system, or for the State to watch itself become overthrown by civil disobedience. This warning is concluded in articulating the problems of the State with unjust laws. He writes with the paradox, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” After targeting the problems of the state, MLK heads to an audience from the state to the people. In terms of “political independence,” America is creeping at a “horse-and-buggy pace.” Asia and Africa, on the other hand, are “moving with jet like speed.” MLK writes of this “political independence” path as a juxtaposition. America is much slower in the path of open freed than nations such as Asia and Africa. These segregation norms in the United States are outdated by a global comparison. MLK also writes of America’s political pace in an ironic fashion. America was the head in the race of industrial powers following the Industrial Revolution, yet it cannot reach the simple goal of political independence for

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