Often times in letters or passages, authors analyze strengths and weaknesses often know as rhetorical analysis. In Martin Luther King Junior’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, he uses terms of artistic appeal by utilizing ethos, pathos, and logos to demonstrate his claim. Martin Luther King Jr. utilizes personal experiences and events to therefore convince the clergyman to stop the segregation occurring and to increase the public use of nonviolent campaigning. Martin Luther King Jr. appeals to ethics throughout his letter to the public as supportive evidence for campaigning. He says, “I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters …show more content…
appeals to logic to support his personal experiences and to demonstrate the effects that nonviolent protests will have on the issues of segregation. “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone trough all these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gain saying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts” (lines 34-37). King shows that he wants to use a logical approach to access the issue of social injustice and he does that by using nonviolence. He says that everyone, including himself, have personal encounters with this ongoing issue in Alabama. “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority” (lines 133-137). MLKJ is showing the logic behind segregation and he is explaining to the public and clergymen how acts of segregation and injustice can affect the individual. He is appealing to the public by showing how segregation personally affects him and how it damages his soul every time someone talks down to him just because he has a different skin tone. Even though all of these things are hurtful and degrading, he still believes that nonviolence is the only way to go about this pressing issue. “One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law
Martin Luther King Jr., activist and leader, in his letter, Letter from Birmingham Jail, argued and emphasized why nonviolent direct action was not extreme when it came to dealing with racial tension in Alabama. His letter was a well written and well thought out response to the clergymen's statement, Call to Unity, a statement that claimed that nonviolent direct action was extreme. King’s purpose for writing his response was to persuade his audience, the clergymen/white moderates, that their thoughts on how he approached and handled racial tension were ill-judged. He successfully got his point across in his response by using rhetorical modes of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos using biblical comparisons, explanations about his cause, and personal stories.
Martin Luther King, Jr. writes from the Birmingham jail, where he is in prison for participating in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation, his response to a statement issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. King writes passionately about the sufferings caused by segregation and moves his argument along using tone. His letter can be broken down, based on tone, into five main sections. These five sections, when combined, make up one of the most irrefutable arguments of all time. By skillfully utilizing diction to create tone, King conveys his message to the United States that segregation is not just a law, it was now a way of life.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. motivation to write “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was to address the injustice he received during his time of his incarceration. King felt distraught and deeply offended by the treatment of the clergymen. He decided that it was useful to put his emotions on paper to express how to best explain his unlawful situation. King wrote this letter with disapproval, sorrow, and disappointment to convey his principles were wrongly tried. He used this letter to justify his reasoning for nonviolent acts of defiance against segregation. Dr. King structured his counterargument for the clergymen after listening to his view, then used ethos, logos, and pathos to make an appeal to his readers his perspective about the unfair treatment of African Americans.
¨Wait...Just wait¨; For years the only thing negros heard when segregation laws were brought up is to just wait. Martin Luther King Jr. was one who was constantly told to wait, that things were changing, that people were doing everything they could to make changes, and that they didn’t need him meddling in their business. In response to all of these claims King wrote “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” In this letter King addresses many of the issues related to the pace at which segregation laws are changing and how he can no longer just sit by idly and watch. In the text King uses a number of different rhetorical strategies to get his points and ideas across. King uses pathos to appeal to his audiences emotion to get them to see things from the negro point of view, ethos that really build his credibility and get his audience to really listen to him, and logos to appeal to people's logic and compare what is happening with the progression of segregation laws in other countries compared to the United States. Although King is in the minority and has far less people on his side he deploys the use of all of these strategies so beautifully and with so much character that it is almost impossible to not side with him.
On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an open letter to African-Americans and all Americans who care about the civil right movement. In order to defend the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism and respond to being called an outsider, King wrote his famous letter “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” So why the King’s letter is so powerful and convincing to the readers? Is it because of his identity of civil-rights leader and his credibility(ethos)? Is it by the reason of the argument “there are just laws and unjust laws" (King) which he exerted numerous theoretical basis with utmost efforts(logos)? Or, It’s due to his passionate writing style and the description of the image of the oppressed black people(pathos). Actually, It’s all of them. These are the rhetorical method King used in his letter.
In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail, he argues that segregation is inhumane and is hurting the American society as a whole. All the time and energy that goes into segregation is slowing down the American society’s progress to succeed as a nation. He uses several rhetoric strategies that help adopt a tone that is both personal and logical. King was able to incorporate the rhetoric triangle into his letter and still managed to address his arguments. While using pathos, ethos, and logos, Martin Luther King Jr. was able use the clergymen’s accusations to successfully promote his own views and opinions instead.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who genuinely knew how to capture his audiences with his words. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” makes an appeal to his reader about the injustices that have been set in place by the oppressor. In the letter he talks about numerous things, mortal authority in Christian communities, American ideas, and the suffering of the African American community. Dr. King uses logos to persuade the reader why he s protesting in the first place because the oppressor has broken the negotiation between the whites and the African American. His logical argument to why the ideal way to proceed with non-violent protests is because of the political decisions that have been made. An example he brings up is the idea of there being just and unjust laws in America and as citizens those unjust should be deliberately disobeyed. Dr. King says, “Conversely, one has a mortal responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all” he soon starts to define what both type of laws means…”A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law…An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the mortal law.” In order to persuade his reader about the idea he has do more than engage with the readers emotions. By Dr. King defining what the difference between the two laws sets a more conceiving idea of the treatment towards African American. Martin Luther King basic point is unjust laws do not just hurt the one being oppressed but also the one doing the oppressing. This is more of logos appeal for the reason he is not trying to connect with the reader emotionally but rather make sure the reader understands his cause for the protests.
In 1963, the rights and the equality for African Americans was a cause constantly fought for. Protests and marches took place in order to push for a change in the society, to make a world where equality is achieved. In a Birmingham jail, sat a civil rights leader named Martin Luther King Jr.. Placed in this cell due to a protest held in Birmingham, Alabama when there was a court order stating it was not allowed, King wrote a letter that has become an influential and infamous piece of writing. This letter became known as, “The letter from a Birmingham Jail”. This letter calls out to the criticisms placed on King and confronts them all. In this letter, through rhetorical devices such as pathos, logos and ethos, and other rhetorical devices.
What do you visualize when you think of a jail cell? Some might see restraints blocking them off from the rest of the world, feel cold metal or scratchy cloth against their skin, or experience the stench of sweat and despair. Martin Luther King Jr. saw a quiet place to write. After being arrested under the charge of “parading without a permit,” Dr. King used his eleven days in the Birmingham City Jail to respond to one specific instance of criticism through a letter geared to each of the many audiences that needed to learn about the desegregation campaign. Mr. King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” is absolutely effective at convincing the overall audience to join and
Martin Luther King, Jr. sat in Birmingham jail not because he committed a crime but because he took part in a non-violent demonstration. King received an invite to a nonviolent demonstration by a local church and was later jailed for his actions (King 1). While in jail, King reflected on the injustice in not only Birmingham, but the world as well. King addressed injustice as a universal wrong which can only be undone by people themselves and not by action forced by the government. He quickly announced that keeping the peace and obeying the law are not the same, the people ahead do not simply relinquish their role because of the selfishness of the human nature. Those who are oppressed will seek to leave injustice behind. Martin Luther
Civil Rights Activist Martin Luther King Jr in his persuasive letter, “letter from Birmingham jail” argues against segregation by using rhetorical devices. Martin Luther King Jr’s purpose is to express his struggles through segregation, he adopts an aggressive tone to get his point across to people in power.
In “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr extensively establishes his ethos and proves his authority on the matter of racial injustice. “I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights” (King 1). King was the focal point of the Civil Rights movement and continues to symbolize the equality of all races to this very day. His authority to advocate on the
After being criticized about his presence in Birmingham by white clergy in a letter published in the Birmingham newspaper, Martin Luther King set out to not only establish why he was in Birmingham, but also to establish moral, legal, and ethical cause to his platform and the resultant peaceful protests he had been promoting, all of which lead to his arrest and the reason he was in jail. Martin Luther King established early on in the letter his credibility as the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and also that he was in Birmingham due to an invitation as a result of his organizational ties. Mr. King also went on to elaborate about his personal reason for being there due to a great injustice to the black people that prevailed in Birmingham. Mr. King used the artistic proofs of ethos, logos and pathos to establish his credibility and persuade or convince his audience in the relevance of his platform.
In Martin Luther King Junior’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, MLK uses ethos, logos, and pathos powerfully and effectively to present his argument that the discrimination of African Americans all over the country is unbearable and should be outlawed forever. King wrote the letter in Birmingham, Alabama after a peaceful protest against segregation which was King’s way of reinforcing his belief that without forceful, direct actions (such as his own), true civil rights could never be achieved.
Writing from the heart, expressing feelings, having a strong emotional impact on ones audience, using an appeal to emotion and logic, using facts and presenting arguments in a professional way, to the enlightenment of one's viewers; Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail; consists of three Rhetorical Strategies throughout his letter that is known and taught around the world as ETHOS, PATHOS and LOGOS. An appeal to ethics, a means of convincing someone of the character or credibility of the persuader (ethos), an appeal to emotion, and a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response (Pathos), and finally, an appeal to logic, and is a way of persuading an audience by reason (Logos); these three Rhetorical Strategies are used countless times throughout Martin Luther King’s Letter for Birmingham Jail.