Rhetorical Devices In Letter From Birmingham Jail

As Martin Luther King Jr. served his prison sentence for participating in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, he wrote an influential open letter titled "Letter from Birmingham Jail". In his letter, King urges the oppressed blacks to rise up to the challenge of overcoming racism and racial segregation. As an experienced orator and rhetorician, King uses many different methods in his writing to evoke a powerful affective response in the reader by creating a sense of urgency and responsibility. He uses techniques such as syntax, diction, parallelism, and Aristotle's three appeals as a call to arms; he argues that direct actions are necessary to break unjust laws, rather than waiting for justice to be served through the prejudiced

He uses strong language to show how blacks have been oppressed and to describe how African Americans have been mistreated. He uses phrases and words such as "notorious reality" (1) to describe the unjust treatment of blacks in court and expresses the inability to achieve true freedom as a "painful experience" (2). In addition to evoking a personal connection to the reader, King also tries to connect with his peers in order to convince them to take action. King describes freedom as "the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood" (2). In order to show how desirable freedom is, he uses words such as majestic and brotherhood to describe civil rights as a monumental binding force. King's careful choice of words are used to sway the reader's sympathy for blacks and to increase the morale of the discriminated. King uses parallelism to add balance and rhythm to his rhetoric. He writes of his own problems that may apply to the daily struggles of the abused African

"But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that “Funtown” is closed to colored children, and see the depressing cloud of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored,” when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness” -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."