Rhetorical Analysis Of I Have A Dream By Martin Luther King Jr.

"I Have A Dream" is a mesmerizing speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was delivered to the thousands of Americans on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. Aimed at the entire nation, King’s main purpose in this speech was to convince his audience to demand racial justice towards the mistreated African Americans and to stand up together for the rights afforded to African American under the Constitution. To further convey this purpose more effectively, King cleverly makes use of the rhetorical devices — ethos, pathos and logos — using figurative language such as metaphors and repetition as well as various other techniques e.g. organization, parallel construction and choice of title.

King’s speech; he puts himself in everyone else’s shoes by saying, “I am happy to join with you today.” By doing this, he captures their attention by telling them that “today will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” Now that the audience is fully engaged, he moves towards the sole purpose of his speech. He does this by saying that after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, “100 years later the Negro still is not free.” He goes on to continue to list some of the issues which still occur today and ends his introduction with saying “now is the time” to start action. The body of his speech is primarily made up of the summarization of injustice that the African American people face. He brings up the fact that some people are unable to vote and the police brutality’s which of course support his argument. He makes it personal by giving his insight of his hopes and dreams for the future by stating that his kids will “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The speech’s conclusion properly reviews Martin Luther King Jr.’s points and stimulates the emotions of the audience. He does this by using the repetition of the phrase “let freedom ring” to rejoin with the audience and really emphasizes his belief of the importance of freedom and injustice. Finally, the last line of his speech, “all of God 's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and

He refers to the principles voiced by the nation's founders in his appeal for racial equality. This strategy was especially important in light of the fact that the government was concerned that the Civil Rights movement might discredit the United States abroad. The government was worried that if they gave African-Americans freedom, the United States would be seen as weak and have been persecuting innocent people. Hence, it was perceptive of King to imply in the speech that he is not undermining the United States, but asking the country to do justice to the principles that were asserted to be the backbone of U.S. politics and society. King states, for example, that his dream was "deeply rooted in the American dream," (King 2) and that he dreams of a day when Americans "will be able to sing with new meaning `My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing'" (King 3). King then uses the words of that song to distinguish the different areas of the country where he hoped the United States would soon "let freedom ring" (King 3) for all its citizens. King alludes to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as being a "promissory note" (King 1) to all citizens, which those at the march were claiming as their inheritance. The speech gains power from King's stressing that he was asking the United States to live up to its principles and thus to fulfill the greatness of its pronounced creed.

Early in his speech, he establishes the connection of the Negro people to American society, stating that “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” Essentially, society has set them up for failure, intentionally creating an environment in which it is impossible to succeed in. Much like the concept of “forty acres a mule,” Negros were deliberately placed in a position of guaranteed failure. When the slaves were freed, they were promised forty acres of land and a mule, but were given no tools to harvest the land. They requested help from other famers, but were swindled out of their land or given land which was implantable, effectively consigning them into being in the same position as they were when they were enslaved. However, King transitions away from a feeling of hopelessness to one of optimism, claiming that although society wants the Negros to feel oppressed, they refuse to believe that “there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of the nation.” They are aware that opportunity and liberty are not things of limited quantity, therefore they should be offered to everyone. The “bank of opportunity” is impossible to go bankrupt because there are unlimited funds, waiting to be distributed out to everyone. The metaphors King connects to the current

King starts the sixth paragraph stating, “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children” (King Jr., Martin Luther). This is an example of the many times Martin appeals to his audience’s religion as well as his own as a minister. He then goes on to say, “This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigoration autumn of freedom and equality” (King Jr., Martin Luther). The purpose of this metaphor, where King compares the Negro’s discontent to a sweltering summer and the gain of their freedom to an invigoration autumn, is to infer that conditions will improve from terrible, as is a sweltering summer, and marvelous, as is an invigorating autumn.

He questions the audience about society and what they have done for their community. “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality; we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one; we can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity,” (King). King knows how to bring the people into the speech to involve every single person standing before him and make them feel like they are apart of the speech. He mentions what has been taken away from them which creates anger within the crowd. King’s ability to appeal to the audience through emotion affected society for decades after and changed the sense of pride the African Americans had.

The primary purpose of Dr. King’s eloquent and dramatically delivered speech is that of persuasion. King’s claim is the Negro people are still not free one hundred years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. This warrant is supported by King’s effective emotional appeal to his African American audience. He supports this with the following: "but one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.” This is emotional because after one hundred years of oppression, the African American community has still not achieved their cultural and economic potential according to King. He is endeavoring to persuade his audience, fellow minorities and

King addresses in this quotation the reasoning behind the sit-ins and the protests that are underway in response to the discrimination that is occurring. His argument about justice is that the single injustice of the discrimination of black people at this time unhinges the idea of justice is encompassing and in this case it is not encompassing the entire population. He speaks of this mutuality between all humans, no matter the race or background of a person and this injustice is truly an injustice to everyone, whether they are affected directly or indirectly by this

In his speech, King expresses, that the "Negro...finds himself in exile in his own land” (Jr., Dr. Martin). This expression yields empathy as it demonstrates that he sympathizes with the unreasonable treatment and distance of African Americans. He likewise utilizes highly conative words to bring out an enthusiastic reaction in the audience, for example, "chains of discrimination" and "oppression" to fortify the requirement for change. He also uplifts his audience through positive diction using words such as “freedom,” “majestic,” and “brotherhood” to spur and move his crowd. He additionally claims to logos through his utilization of analogies: “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient

On the 28th of August 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most inspiring, and influential speeches America has ever encountered titled “I Have a Dream”. The inspirational high point of a civil rights movement that asked for wrongs to be righted and for every American to get the same chance at success. He delivered his speech to blacks and whites to help advocate the idea of equality throughout all Americans. Martin Luther King first talks about America’s past, he then gradually moves on to the present and the current racial dilemmas African Americans are facing. Martin Luther then advocates Americans to take actions promptly to stop the racism that has been running through America’s veins for centuries. King relies heavily on pathos, ethos, and logos to convey his message of equality. As well as the use of several fallacies such as, the overly sentimental appeal, the bandwagon appeal, and circular reasoning to interact with his audience.

Continuously throughout his speech, King refers to the movement for freedom as a beacon of light. It is something the people of America should follow as it promises hope for the future. Also, King compares the racial injustices to burning fire by saying “seared in the flames of withering injustice”. The use of powerful words such as “seared” and “flames” really stand out to the listeners and gives them a sense of pain and despair, helping them to see the wrongdoings of the people who allowed these injustices. King goes on to say “the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty..” giving listeners a sense that African Americans were cast into this imprisonment of injustice, not through their own faults, but through the oppression of others.

Martin Luther King Jr is an African American civil rights activist during the 1960s. I decided to do my analysis on his speech "I Have a Dream" because this speech is very important in American history. The speech has a simple context. "I Have a Dream" speech was given during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Dr. King's main purpose was to make a change in white and black citizens during the Civil Rights era. He wanted to end racism in the United States and wanted everyone to accept the change in a non-violent way. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold those truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” (Jr).

He continues by saying, “And so, we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.” Throughout this quote King has been referring to this ‘justice bank’ or ’insufficient funds’ but in reality this is just Kings way of using metaphor to represent the unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness that the blacks never received. In this part of the quote King expresses the words freedom and security strongly to give his audience the feeling of security and the thought of being finally free. Martin Luther King uses the uneducated listeners as an advantage in his speech by saying things such as ‘freedom’ and ‘security’ to make them believe that this will be a problem that is fixed and they will have no doubts against his

Martin Luther King Jr.’s most effective literary device in his “I Have a Dream” speech is his wielding of metaphors to influence the audience’s thoughts which, as a result, incites an emotional response. To set some common grounds between his wide range of audience, he begins with something that is universally relatable--the weather. King claims, “This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality” (para. 7). In this metaphor, he’s addressing the African American’s fury to the aggressive summer heat and freedom and equality to the relief that autumn provides after the merciless summer heat. The usual effect of summer causes a person to yearn for relief, and those who’ve attended the speech

King inspires those who support equal rights for all “ to rise up from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial injustice”.and stand up for what they believe. He insists that people who believe in the cause to speak up and join together as one voice, to demand equal rights that they deserve. In addition King uses Light and Dark imagery to make a statement on how people have been waiting a long time to receive equality and the same freedom as everyone else. He does this by discussing the Emancipation Proclamation, and how “ It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.