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All Because of his skill in creating such pieces of writing, as well as his influential role within the Civil Rights Movement, and the reminder that Letter from Birmingham Jail provides of these trying times, his letter should continue to be included within A World of Ideas. These two techniques played a crucial role in furthering his purpose and in provoking a powerful response from the audience that made this speech memorable and awe-inspiring. 1963, a letter was written to the clergy to alert them of what great injustices were taking place in Birmingham, Alabama. Using emotional appeals captures an audience's attention and makes them think about what the narrator is saying. The clergymen along with others are addressed in an assertive tone allowing them to fully understand why his actions are justified. 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. Not only does he use pathos to humanize himself, but he also uses it to humanize his immediate audience, the eight clergymen. was initially the eight clergymen of Birmingham, all white and in positions of religious leadership. Original: Apr 16, 2013. Pathos are present more often in the I Have A Dream speech, mainly because he is bravely facing a crowd, speaking from the heart, rather than formality. Lloyd Bitzer describes rhetorical situation as, a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action to bring about the significant modification of the exigence (6). These circumstances lead us to our next rhetorical focus: audience. Bitzer, Lloyd F. The Rhetorical Situation.. I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. In the Gettysburg Address Lincoln talks about how people fought the war and how people should honor their soldiers. Dr. King responded to criticism that was made by clergymen about calling Dr. King activities as "Unwise and Untimely". In "Letter from Birmingham Jail", King typically uses repetition in the form of anaphora - repeating the same word (s) at the beginning of consecutive clauses. Although the letter was addressed to the eight clergymen, the Letter from Birmingham Jail speaks to a national audience. This use of parallelism draws on the emotions of personal experiences to persuade that segregation is a problem in a myriad of ways. Lastly he shows ethos by using authority in his speech by using quotes from two very famous documents. A letter, as a medium, is constraining as there is one definitive original copy, it is addressed to a small specific group, and since it cannot be directly broadcasted widely, opposed to television or radio, it must be printed or passed along analogically. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America till the Negro is granted his citizenship rights (King pg. The eight clergymen in Birmingham released a public statement of caution regarding the protesters actions as unwise and untimely (King 1), to which Martins letter is a direct response. In Martin Luther King Jrs I Have a Dream speech he effectively uses ethos, diction and powerful metaphors to express the brutality endured by African American people. Parallelism In Letters From Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. uses pathos and parallelism frequently throughout Letters from Birmingham Jail, to persuade the clergyman to support his actions in the civil rights movement. There isn't quite as much of that in "Letter From Birmingham Jail," but it still pops up a couple of times. The letter from the Birmingham jail of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Consequently, King fabricates logos as he urges African-Americans to demand justice from their oppressors, an issue that directly affects everyone across the nation: not just those in specific areas. The "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was written by the African American hero Dr. Martin Luther King in Birmingham back in 1963, addressing the issues that the African Americans faced back in that time. With his respectful nature, humility, compassion, optimism, and determination, King responded to a group of white Alabama clergymen who had condemned the civil rights protests as extreme in their open letter, A Call for Unity. Although his letter was directed towards a small group of eight men, his words eventually reached the minds and hearts of the entire country. While his letter was only addressed to the clergymen, it is safe to assume that King had intent on the public eventually reading his letter, considering his position within the Civil Rights movement, use of persuasive rhetorical language, and hard-hitting debates on the justification of law. Martin Luther King Jr. uses both logical and emotional appeals in order for all his listeners to be able to relate and contemplate his speeches. Kings decision to compare his efforts to those of biblical figures with shared intent was a deliberate attempt to find common ground with his initial readers, the eight religious Birmingham clergymen, through the faith of a shared religion. King intended for the entire nation to read it and react to it. King does this in an effective and logical way. MLK uses both ways to gain the attention and agreement of the audience but, he uses pathos not just more, but in a more relatable way in order to appeal to his audience. King's letter from Birmingham Jail addresses the American society, particularly the political and religious community of the American society. It elucidated the exigence behind his letter as his presented rationale behind his arrest only made unjust laws appear more asinine and questionable by relation. Repetitions help the writer give structure to his arguments and highlight important aspects. In order to do this, Martin Luther King uses several techniques in paragraph thirteen and fourteen of his letter such as repetition, personification, as well as allusion, to support his claim that racial unity has taken too long. Furthermore, as King attests to the significance of the Birmingham injustices, he utilizes antithesis to foster logos: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere; Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly (515). Macbeth) in the essay title portion of your citation. King was the figurehead of the Civil Rights movement, infamous for his I Have a Dream speech and substantially impactful rhetoric promoting social and political change, peaceful indignation, and calls to awareness. Martin Luther King responds to the subjectivity of law and the issue he paramounts by using precise and impactful rhetoric from inside of his jail cell. In order to dispel any misguided ideas that whites have of the Negroes fortune, King tells them directly that Negroes are in poverty as everybody is blocking them from entering the ocean of material prosperity. The second time King uses antithesis is when he states that Nineteen Sixty-Three is not an end, but a beginning, which he aims to express that the revolution will not stop at 1963; rather it will have a new beginning. In the beginning of the speech, King goes back to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence stating that .all men, black or white, were to be granted the same rights (Declaration of Independence). If your first two elements are verbs, the third element is usually a verb, too. Dr. King repeats the same starting words when you have seen with different examples of injustices. Letter from Birmingham Jail; McAuley ELA I HON. In this example, King employs antithesis to highlight the logical structure and urgency of his argument against inequity, which allows him to establish logos. While the Civil Rights movement superseded the dismantling of Jim Crow, the social ideologies and lackadaisical legislature behind anti-black prejudice continued to rack the country far into the 1960s. Take for instance when the part of the letter when Dr. King talks about different men, both biblical, Martin Luther King Jr.s goal in Letter From Birmingham Jail is to convince the people of Birmingham that they should support civil disobedience and the eventual end to the segregation laws in Birmingham. He seeks to make them see the logic behind their protesting and make them feel ashamed and embarrassed by the way that they have been treating the African Americans. you can use them for inspiration and simplify your student life. This is the beginning of King's point-by-point rebuttal of the criticisms leveled against him. But the strongest influential device King used was pathos. MLKs use of pathos and repetition is an effective way to persuade his audience about his position on civil disobedience. At this time, he is representative of the Black American population and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole he is Martin Luther King Jr., and while this is a powerful position to occupy, the constraints imposed are just as dominant. Through the masterful use of analogies and undeniable examples of injustice, Kings disgruntled response to the clergies proves the justification for direct action taking place to establish equality for African Americans., Martin Luther Kings letter from Birmingham Jail was written to respond to white religious leaders who criticized his organizations actions against racial prejudice and injustice among black society in Birmingham. Your email address will not be published. To minimize the possibility of being deemed invalid due to his race, he must choose what he states and how he states it very precisely which correlates to the constraints Martin Luther himself has on his rhetorical situation. In the "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written by Martin Luther King Jr., King delivers a well structured response to eight clergymen who had accused him of misuse of the law. On April 12, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and nearly 50 other protestors and civil rights leaders were arrested after leading a Good Friday demonstration as part of the . is undeniably effective at responding to the rhetorical situation at hand. Order can only be held for so long whilst injustice is around. His masterful delivery of these metaphors and the frequent repetition makes the speech much like a poem or a part of a song. Throughout the text, King utilized the values of his audience to gain sympathy and later on support. Note: All essays placed on IvyMoose.com are written by students who kindly donate their papers to us. Kings arguments induce an emotional response in his readers. In Letter From Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King responds to the subjectivity of law and the issue he paramounts by using precise and impactful rhetoric from inside of his jail cell. King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, including hundreds of schoolchildren. This period of quiet speculation over the law illuminates the national divide in opinion over the matter, one which King helped persuade positively. Throughout the letter, Dr. King does a tremendous job of supporting his argument with the three elements of Aristotles rhetorical appeal. In his letter he uses examples like when you have seen hate-filled policeman curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters. and when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and gathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim to make his audience envision and feel what many negroes felt while watching their families put up with this mistreatment. Black Americans were forced to sit behind buses and kids were to use old books and uniforms of White Americans. Throughout the essay, King uses several powerful tones to complement his strong opinion, Martin Luther King Jrs Letter from Birmingham Jail is one his many writings on segregation and racial inequality towards blacks in the southern American states. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere!" In Letter from Birmingham Jail, King implements antithesis -- along with his background as a minister -- to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Southern clergymen, as he attempts to further diverge the two diametric rationales; thus, he creates logos as he appeals to the audiences logical side and urges African-Americans to act punctual in their fight against injustice, prompted by the imprudent words of the clergy. Several clergy who negatively critiqued Kings approach of seeking justice, wrote A Call for Unity, arguing that his protests were senseless and improper. Yet his most important method of reaching his audience, and conveying his enduring message of equality and freedom for the whole nation was his appeal to pathos. Parallelism takes many forms in literature, such as anaphora, antithesis, asyndeton, epistrophe, etc. The way Dr. King constructs his argument is as if he was preaching his argument to his congregation. This protest, his subsequent arrest, and the clergymens public statement ostensibly make up the rhetorical exigence, but it truly stems from a much larger and dangerous situation at hand: the overwhelming state of anti-black prejudice spread socially, systematically, and legislatively in America since the countrys implementation of slavery in Jamestown, 1619. He hopes that this letter will stop this injustice matter, and show what the African American desire. Dr. King was arrested, and put in jail in Birmingham where he wrote a letter to the clergymen telling them how long Blacks were supposed to wait for their God giving rights and not to be force and treated differently after, In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail from jail in Birmingham, Alabama in response to a public statement issued by eight white clergyman calling his actions unwise and untimely. An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and Dr. King brought people up and gave them hope that one day everything will be taken care of and we 'll all be happy, he said that one day we 'll have peace and love among each other. While this fight had been raging for nearly 10 years, the release in 1963 was shortly followed by the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Both their speeches, I Have a Dream and The Ballot or the Bullet may have shared some common traits, but at the same time, differed greatly in various aspects. They fought for what they believed in but in vastly different ways. Without King, America would be probably still heavily segregated. Letter from a Birmingham Jail: The Rhetorical Analysis At the peak of the Civil War Movement in America on April 12th, 1963, eight Alabama . King goes on to write that he is disappointed that white moderates care less about justice and more about order. Parallelism/ Juxtaposition. Here, King concedes that the clergy acts with the virtuous goal of justice in mind, which allows him to establish his argument against the manner in which they seek equality. African Americans have been waiting to have there civil rights of freedom, but the social courts has requested them not protest on the street but to take it to court. Its important to note that his initial readers/supporters greatly impacted the scope of his audience, spreading the letter through handouts, flyers, and press, in the hopes that others would be impacted for the better by the weight of the exigence at hand. The eight clergymen in Birmingham released a public statement of caution regarding the protesters actions as unwise and untimely (King 1), to which Martins letter is a direct response. Lines 14-43: King provides three different types of reasons in his letter to justify his presence in Birmingham: Organizational reasons, religious or historical reasons, and moral reasons. Repetition. Besides the use of pathos, King uses repetition to enhance the effectiveness of his argument. Martin Luther King then goes on to make an analogy to the Bible, portraying Apostle Pauls proliferation of the gospel of Jesus Christ in parallel to his own efforts, stating, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown (1). Letter to Birmingham Jail is a response to a group of Birmingham ministers who voiced negative comments and questioned the civil rights demonstrations Dr. King was leading in Birmingham. Even now, it continues to make generations of people, not just Americans, to give up their racist beliefs and advocate social colorblindness. 1, Penn State University Press, 1968, pp. The rhetorical choices referenced above are riddled with pathos, also known as language utilized to persuade the audience emotionally. Parallelism is a literary device in itself, but it is also a category under which other figures of speech fall, such as those mentioned previously. King concludes with optimism about the future of the relationship between the currently segregated blacks and whites. Lincoln states, We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. What he says means that the soldiers lost their lives to give us freedom. When Dr. King first arrived in Birmingham, trouble occurred when he and fellow activists were . As King disproves the arguments of the white clergymen, he utilizes antithesis to create logos; furthermore, he calls the reader to take action against injustice across the nation. Dr. King was the foremost civil rights leader in America in the 1950s and 1960s who was ordained minister and held a doctorate in theology. Dr. King fought against segregation between Black Americans and White Americans. Furthermore the Kings parallel structure clarifies and highlights his intent by building up to a more important point. for only $11.00 $9.35/page. Dr. Good uses of similes, metaphors, and imagery will act on the reader's senses creating a false sense of perception. All of these factors influence each other to shape rhetoric, which Bitzer describes as, pragmatic; it comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself (3), with Martin Luther Kings. He proves his authority through his explanation of his experience as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia (King 232), and he emphasizes the importance of addressing the situation to him when he says, seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas, referring to the people of Birminghams resistance to the civil protests that he has been leading in Birmingham (King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. mentions the atrocities of racism and describes his endless battles against it. Martin Luther King Jr., with the Rev. He died in 1968. His mention of involvement and leadership within a Christian civil rights organization, strength of religious analogy, and general politeness are effective rhetorical choices used to shape how he is perceived despite his critical response, racial setbacks, and arrest: a relatable man of faith, rationale, and initiative. Other than the speechs heartwarming and moving content, Kings effective structure along with the usage of all three rhetorical modes and certain rhetorical tropes and schemes has revealed the reason I Have a Dream as a masterpiece of rhetoric and it persuades hundreds of thousands of people support the blacks instead of treating them. In his letter King effectively manipulates language and tone to strengthen his argument against the complaints of the clergyman and successfully address the white people. While his letter was only addressed to the clergymen, it is safe to assume that King had intent on the public eventually reading his letter, considering his position within the Civil Rights movement, use of persuasive rhetorical language, and hard-hitting debates on the justification of law. The amount of original essays that we did for our clients, The amount of original essays that we did for our clients. Martin Luther found himself arrested on the twelfth of April 1963 after leading a peaceful protest throughout Birmingham, Alabama after he defied a state courts injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores (Jr., Martin Luther King). His Letter from Birmingham Jail was the match. First, King writes that the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. This antithesis makes the audience realize that the Negroes have been left behind and ignored while the rest of modern society has charged forward into prosperity and fortune. Introduction. Throughout Kings letter, he used various ways of persuasive strategies: pathos, logos, and ethos. The audience of Letter From Birmingham Jail was initially the eight clergymen of Birmingham, all white and in positions of religious leadership. , 29 May 2019, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/letter-birmingham-jail. King wants to bring to the readers realization the fact that laws are only to be followed when they are rightfully just and correct. He wants the clergyman to realize that what they believe and think is wrong. Engels . Wiki User 2013-03-13 02:55:46 Study now See answer (1) Copy "One has not only legal but moral responsibility to obey just. He uses parallelism by repeating I had hoped to ironically accuse his attackers. Here are more examples of parallel structure within "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that I find especially powerful. Parallelism In Letters From Birmingham Jail 172 Words1 Page Martin Luther King Jr. uses pathos and parallelism frequently throughout "Letters from Birmingham Jail," to persuade the clergyman to support his actions in the civil rights movement. This essay was written by a fellow student. Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham Jail.. In sum, all rhetoric has an external situation in which it is responding to. , vol. He evokes emotion on his audience by discussing the trials and injustice African Americans have endured. There are three main considerations to make while analysing a rhetorical situation: the constraints, the exigence, and the audience. However, the racial divide was legislated in 1877 with the implementation of Jim Crow laws, which lasted until 1950. He also wants the readers to realize that negroes are not to be mistreated and that the mistreatment of negroes could have severe implications as in a violent protest against the laws made by the court.