Examples Of Logos In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Furthermore, Martin also uses logos and pathos in his "Letter from Birmingham jail". An example of logos can be found in paragraph 31, where he lists several other supposed extremists in the bible. " Was not Jesus an extremist in love? ... Was not Amos an extremist for justice? …

In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King uses logos and alliteration to advocate for civil disobedience. This is shown on page seven in paragraph thirteen when MLK says, “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality… Hence segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful”. This quote displays MLK’s intense use of logos because he explains that segregation is unjust and gives reasons as to why this is true. Martin Luther King describes distortion of the soul and personality to reason that segregation doesn’t make sense in our society. He logically explains why segregation is toxic to people and the country as a

Dr. King uses Logos in both texts, though “I Have A Dream” uses Logos more than “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” In “I Have A Dream,” he uses charged language to stir the audience’s emotions. For example, in paragraph 15, King states “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.” (King Pg 263) Moreover, he uses repetition and parallelism to unite sections of the speech and add rhythm. In paragraphs 27 through 38, King repeats the phrase “let freedom ring” in a constant and rhythmic pattern to enforce the concept of equality everywhere (King Pg 264). In addition to this, King uses Logos in “Letter From Birmingham Jail” frequently, like when he compares people’s thoughts about police brutality to his own (King Pg 285).

Martin Luther King use logos and repetition to make his argument come across better and reinforce his main ideas in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. An example of logos is when he said “We can never forget everything Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’…It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany” (King 8). King states the fact that Hitler performed “legal” things and helping Jews was “illegal”. We know as Americans that Hitler did terrible things that should not have been legal. The Americans at the time knew that as well and King was comparing that the legal laws of the time were just as cruel and racist as the laws Hitler enforced. King also uses repetition to prove his point, by repeating “I don’t believe you would have

Martin Luther King uses logos in his speech the least but does well to persuade the audience using logic and reason. For example, King compares a bad check to African Americans and the rights they were promised. “America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” He uses this analogy because it’s something everybody has dealt with at some point. In

Members of my audience include: Mr. Brett Romine, Gavin Bowling, and Brian Reagan. Mr. Romine is forty-six years young. He is a highly educated man and has a Masters Degree in English. He is a white Caucasian man who speaks English. He enjoys and is interested in reading other people's writing. Gavin Bowling is a sixteen year old teenage,Caucasian male. He is working on his third year of achieving a high school education. He is interested in.... well... he is not a very open person. Finally, Brian Reagan is also a sixteen year old, White, Caucasian teenager. Like Gavin, he is working on his third year of achieving a high school education. He is interested in being a translator later in life for a career, but he is uncertain.

In Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, King makes use of an innumerable amount of rhetorical devices that augment the overall understanding and flow of the speech. King makes the audience feel an immense amount of emotion due to the outstanding use of pathos in his speech. King also generates a vast use of rhetorical devices including allusion, anaphora, and antithesis. The way that King conducted his speech adds to the comprehension and gives the effect that he wants to rise above the injustices of racism and segregation that so many people are subjected to on a daily basis.

Logos means reason. Martin Luther King Jr. uses logos to show why he is delivering this speech and why he wants things to change. He is delivering this speech to show how many blacks and other races, that weren’t being treated equally, really didn’t have freedom like they should. “It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro.” (King, M. L. Jr. (1963, Aug.28) Para 6) “Instead of honoring the sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” (King, M. L. Jr. (1963, Aug.28) Para 5) These quotes are just a couple of the logos quotes Martin Luther King said in his speech.

At the beginning of Martin Luther King’s speech, he says, “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free, one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination…” (Martin Luther King speech, 1963, para. 3). King keeps saying “one hundred years later”, to show that no matter how much time passes, African Americans will never be equal to the whites. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Logos is shown all throughout his “I have a dream” speech. He is letting the audience know that they have not been given equal opportunities, like the whites have been given.

In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King uses pathos, logos, and ethos to really convey his message. Though he uses all three very effectively, King most effectively uses pathos and logos by giving illustrations of what African Americans faced every day, examples in history in which the law was not right, and the make-up of a just or unjust law.

King’s portrayal of logos was one technique that he made excellent usage of in his speech. In one example he stated, “When will you be satisfied? We will never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” (Martin 2001, par 9). He goes on to give other extreme examples as to why “we can never be satisfied,” if we continue to be treated less than equals. In this valuable use of logos, he uses an example of “If…then” to convince his audience that change was needed in order to be satisfied of true freedom. In this excerpt passage of the speech, King emphasized that the “Negro must want more out of life and should not settle for being treated less than human, but must demand to be equal to his fellow man.

King used logos to make a connection to prior historical events that outlawed segregation. For example, Dr. King talked about the Constitution and Declaration of Independence being a promissory to which every person falls under (King 48). Unlike in No One Turn Me Around they only used logos when they were talking about Dr. King’s speech so the author did not use logos in their own way. They also did not really use ethos Dr. King’s speech was all about ethos. He even included it in his text when he said “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds.”

Martin Luther King Jr. has made two really good “announcements” to specific audiences and used certain techniques to connect to the audience. Martin Luther King Jr's “I Have a Dream” speech is speaking out to nonviolent protesters at the Lincoln Memorial to gain Civil Rights for all African Americans. Earlier, he has written the “Letter From Birmingham Jail” to eight white clergymen because he is responding to criticism in a newspaper from the eight white clergymen. Both the speech “I Have a Dream” and the “Letter From Birmingham” has Logos and Pathos that Martin Luther King Jr. has used to appeal to his audience.

Martin Luther King, Jr was and is still a very influential man especially during his era of the Civil Rights Movement, but what he is possibly most noticeable for is his I Have a Dream speech. Martin Luther King, Jr is not a man of violence, instead he is a man of words and he demonstrates that by the way he developed and presented his famous speech using literary devices such as pathos, ethos, and logos.

Martin Luther King Jr. has had a major impact on the lives of many African-Americans, both in and outside of war combat, but the fight is not over. “Save the soul of America”(Source A), this appeals to logos because it shows that Martin Luther King Jr. is trying to leave a legacy of peace, and sacrifice. This helps the reader understand the power that Martin Luther King’s speech exemplified, as he further states, “We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people.” “Slaves...shackles they still wear.”(Source A) This is a representation of ethos because this part of the speech is referring to the slaves in the country that are still yet to be freed. This helps the reader try to understand the true vision of the African-Americans, and that is to be free, and be treated with the same amount of respect as their white counter partners. In this source I think it is fairly easy to recognise that civil liberty issues have yet to be resolved as it talks