ipl-logo

Rhetorical Devices Used In Letter From Birmingham Jail

1166 Words5 Pages

On April 16, 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, a persistent civil rights leader, addressed 8 white clergymen on the way they responded to the protests from nonviolent Negros. He supports this claim by first emphasizing that all of what is going on is part of their heritage and how everyone has rights, then by telling them breaking the law and standing up for what they believe in embodies the American spirit, and finally indicates the protesters are heroes and they are doing what they can to defend themselves and show others their side of what is going on. Through King’s use of tone, rhetorical appeals, and rhetorical tools he effectively persuades the clergymen and the people of the U.S, to fathom what is happening everyday around them and …show more content…

One rhetorical tool King uses in his letter is pronouns to address the audience. This rhetorical tool addresses a particular audience but it is not necessarily to persuade them at this point. King drops these rhetorical tools throughout the one of them "I am afraid that it is much too long to take, your precious time" (paragraph 5). King talks to the clergyman through this rhetorical tool and addresses them in different ways. King rates with a purpose his purpose is to persuade people and change their opinion on civil rights. At the end of his letter he addresses the clergymen " I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow clergymen and a Christian brother" (paragraph 7). This statement makes a claim the king wants to meet these seven clergymen in person and speak about the issues he wrote in this letter. Another rhetorical tool king uses in his letter are similes. This rhetorical tool helps king compare two things and address the point as he sees it. "Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek" (paragraph 3). Dr. Martin Luther King Junior attacks the clergyman and speaks what he believes with these similes. King is using real life examples that the clergymen are not seeing. Kind is giving them his side of the story. "But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use Morrow means to preserve immoral ends" (paragraph 3). There pare many things that help King’s way of expressing how he feels and what he sees, like pronouns to address the audience and

Show More
Related
198 Words | 1 Pages

What are rhetorical devices? How can they be used? Martin Luther King Jr. numerous rhetorical devices in the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” writing to clergymen who wrote a public letter calling King’s actions “unwise and untimely” and telling him to “wait.” Despite Martin Luther King Jr. using many rhetorical devices in his letter, ethos and anaphora are the most powerful, for they increase credibility and create rhythm and urgency. MLK uses ethos by letting the readers (clergymen) understand his educational status and his role as a religious leader.

Read More
521 Words | 3 Pages

In this letter by Martin Luther King Jr., he wants to explain to the eight clergymen why he has been jailed. He wants to show them that what he was doing was necessary. The clergymen were confused and upset about his image and wrote a statement explaining their own views. After reading this statement, King wanted to have these men completely educated on the matter. King does this by persuading his audience, using various rhetorical devices.

Read More
691 Words | 3 Pages

Martin Luther king Jr. uses many stylistic elements such as allusion and metaphors to support his evidence and influence your readers. King wanted to give the readers something to think about and he wanted

Read More
1060 Words | 5 Pages

In paragraphs 33 to 44 of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s response to “A Call for Unity,” a declaration by eight clergymen, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963), he expresses that despite his love for the church, he is disappointed with its lack of action regarding the Civil Rights Movement. Through powerful, emotionally-loaded diction, syntax, and figurative language, King adopts a disheartened tone later shifts into a determined tone in order to express and reflect on his disappointment with the church’s inaction and his goals for the future. King begins this section by bluntly stating that he is “greatly disappointed” (33) with the church, though he “will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen” (33). By appealing to ethos and informing the audience of his history with the church, he indicates that he is not criticizing the church for his own sake, but for the good of the church.

Read More
814 Words | 4 Pages

Martin Luther King Junior was phenomenal at using rhetoric devices to prove his points. This is made extremely apparent in his letter titled, A Letter from Birmingham Jail. In this pice of writing he uses two different types of Ethos, along with definition, pathos, periodic sentences, and diction. Martin uses all of these to reply to the group of clergymen who sent him a letter while he was in prison. In their letter they said that Martin should stop causing public disturbances.

Read More
1028 Words | 5 Pages

Dr. King uses descriptive words and metaphors to convey the emotions and things he is feeling. King is condemning the clergymen saying other religious leaders have come and joined us, then why will you not help us? He speaks of the other religious leaders helping his cause as a way to convince and urge the clergymen to join his side. King wants freedom breaking out of the metaphorical “chains” and not conforming and is thankful to everyone that has decided to join in and help him do so. “Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue” (King 354).

Read More
395 Words | 2 Pages

The “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was written by Martin Luther King Jr. He wrote this as a reply to “A Letter from the Clergy” which was written by eight clergymen. This essay’s style is inspirational. “Let us all hope that dark clouds of racial prejudice…over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty” (King 500-501).

Read More
486 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout the letter he doesn’t solely address the clergymen's distress such as King looking on as an outcast coming in, the disputes and marches being irresponsible and ill timed, but he expected a deeper form of interrogation. The clergymen had a sense of urgency for conferences and meetings, in place of direct action, but King needed to illustrate that direct action is essential to reach fair negotiating terms. Besides just constructing arguments for this point and being unprepared for rebuttal, he anticipated questions that they might ask. King concentrated on interests from the competition during his entire letter. By addressing these trepidations in an unbiased and reasonable manner, he showed the audience that he gave an abundant amount of thought to their opinion and took them

Read More
741 Words | 3 Pages

It certainly seems that throughout many parts of the letter that King uses the clergymen as a stepping stool to achieve this, whilst still simultaneously castigating them for their earlier remarks against himself. As Leff and Utley said, “This construct allows King to criticize his target without alienating himself from it and also allows the ‘eavesdropping’ black audience to discover a model for reconstructing their own sense of agency” (37). Truly, King shows off his master of wordplay in quite an outstanding way within this

Read More
740 Words | 3 Pages

While in solitary confinement for nearly 8 days, reverend and social justice activist, Martin Luther King Jr., wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to the criticism he received for his non-violent protests. Several clergy who negatively critiqued King’s approach of seeking justice, wrote A Call for Unity, arguing that his protests were senseless and improper. Within the article, the clergymen provide nine different critiques that asserted how King’s protest are invalid, uneffective, and simply unintelligent in the fight for obtaining justice and equity for individuals of color. His letter has become one of the most profound pieces of literature of the 20th century, as King uses vivid examples and eloquent rhetorical devices to counter all nine arguments.

Read More
1546 Words | 7 Pages

Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong leader in the Civil Rights movement, the son and grandson of a minister, and one heck of a letter writer. As he sits in a cell of Birmingham Jail in 1963, he responds to criticism from eight white clergymen. Though this letter was intended for the judgemental and condescending men of high faith, his response touched the hearts and minds of the entire U.S. population, then, and for years to come. In his tear-jerking, mind-opening letter, King manages to completely discredit every claim made by the clergymen while keeping a polite and formal tone. Metaphors, allusions, and rhetorical questions are used in the most skillful way to support his argument and ultimately convince his audience of the credibility behind his emotional, yet factual, claims.

Read More
866 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the text, King utilized the values of his audience to gain sympathy and later on support. His use of diction and syntax would align his mission to God’s, and show that he was in the right and the clergymen were in the wrong. In his letter, King effectively used an extended periodic sentence that consisted of more than 300 words. The sentence has an extreme appeal to pathos, with such vivid imagery

Read More
466 Words | 2 Pages

MLK states in paragraph 3, “...just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.” King uses an analogy to give his audience an idea of what he is doing when fighting for civil rights. Lastly, King uses a rhetorical question in his letter. He asks the question on page 278 in paragraph 24, “But is this a logical assertion?” MLK uses this question to make his

Read More
709 Words | 3 Pages

In “A Letter From A Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King Jr defends his use of nonviolent protest in order to accomplish racial equality. In the letter, Dr. King uses ethos, diction, and allusions when defending nonviolent protest which makes his argument really strong. His goal is to make the clergymen help him fight racial equality. He uses ethos to build up credibility.

Read More
1229 Words | 5 Pages

He incorporated a lot of biblical allusions to insist the audience that his speech is in accordance to the Bible, as King writes that he has a dream that one day, “every valley shall be exalted,” every hill and mountain “made low,” all rough places will be “plain” and crooked places “straight” and that the “glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” (Isaiah 40:4-5). On another occasion he paraphrased one of biblical statement “weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” (Psalms 30:5 ) in his words as “It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity “cite .King’s allusions to past events help to create unite both races and inspire them to tackle this problem collectively as both colors experienced American history in some form or another. King not only references the Biblical allusions which emotionally appeal to people but also mentions legal statements like declaration of independence and Emancipation proclamation by mentioning “Five score years …” to refer to Abraham Lincoln’s address and “promissory note” to direct their attention towards their legal rights as mentioned in the constitution.

Read More

More about Rhetorical Devices Used In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Related Topics

Open Document