Why We Can T Wait Rhetorical Analysis

America in the 1960’s was a dark, despairing environment for African Americans, or Negroes. Conditions in all areas of life were poor, chances of success were slim to none, and appreciation or acceptance in the community was barely a dream. Negroes of this time were downtrodden, disrespected, and poorly treated. In his book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” Martin Luther King uses historical allusion, emotive imagery, rhetorical questions, and juxtaposition to convey the negative, daunting poor social conditions of Black Americans in the 1960’s.

In most of King’s pieces, he devotes great effort in trying to make connections with his audience. In “Why We Can’t Wait” -- King’s book that marked the beginning of American’s “Negro Revolution”, King develops a close connection with his audience – African Americans that suffer from the cruelty of the Jim Crow education. Simply looking at the title of the book, “Why We Can’t Wait” captures the audiences’ attention, because the pronoun “we” includes everyone (including King himself) and thus informing them about the extent of the problem. The connection to the audience builds further in this book, and yet the most powerful passage was the introduction. In the introduction, King draws a comparison of the daily lives between a “young Negro boy” from Harlem and a “young Negro girl” from Birmingham (9). King depicts the images of these children, because they symbolize the difficult childhood that most African-Americans experienced during the time. Dropping out of school, subjecting to unemployment, or losing a family member are traumas faced by African-Americans commonly during their childhood, due to their race and vulnerability as children. Depicting such childhood evokes the audiences’ similar memories, thus they will inevitably emphasize with the situation and relate to the

King belabors the point made on the struggles of colored people; he lists specific examples that highlight the overarching point of this paragraph. He establishes a candid, impassioned tone that allows the reader,

This passage can be divided into three distinct sections, each section with its own purpose. The first section describes the boy and the girl's lives they are living. In the middle section, MLK describes the history of important African Americans throughout time. The final section is about black lives overall and contains rhetorical questions. These three sections contribute to the overall passage by making it more effective for the audience.

He references historical events such as the American Revolutionary War against Britain and early slavery to make his point. He indicates that “the first American to shed blood in the revolution...was a black seaman named Crispus Attucks.” King also reminds the readers that it was “Negroes who were with George Washington at Valley Forge.” In concluding this section, King references Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that was supposed to ensure equality in America, but “equality has never arrived” because African Americans are still facing discrimination. His appeal to logic gives the black audience proof of their worth so that they can see why they deserve freedom.

uses figurative language and rhetorical appeal to appeal to his audience. On page 4 it states, “Like a boil that can never be cured so long as its covered up but must be opened with all of its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” This detail explains that King uses similes to compare racial injustice with a boil to show that instead of covering them up, they should be exposed in order for them to be fixed. If the racial injustice is hidden from the nation and its people, it can’t be fixed and it will continue to go on. So, the people must take direct action for there to be change in America. It also states on page 8, “I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys…” This detail demonstrates that King uses pathos when describing the cruel treatment of the black people in jail. He does this to make the black Americans angry at the oppressors, more specifically the policemen, to make them take matters into their own hands. They would do this by joining Martin Luther King Jr.’s cause, which is the Civil Rights Movement. King uses figurative

In Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream speech’, he proclaimed, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation…. But one hundred years later, the Negro is still not free.” For years people have fought for racial equality, but even now in the twenty-first century we still have not achieved that. Martin Luther King Jr fought for the rights of black people, and his words are still spoken to call others to fight this injustice. In Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, he uses many stylistic elements including structure, language, and figurative language to influence his readers thoughts and convince them to join the fight for racial equality.

In Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King responds to the clergymen’s criticism on his non-violent actions being “unwise and untimely.” In his introduction, King uses front loading to provide a preview and background of what his letter will discuss. As he justifies why his actions were not “unwise or untimely” King addresses the bigger issue of the black community suffering injustices and the need to take action for justice. To convey his arguments King effectively uses quotations, allusions and pathos to support his argument and to refute what his opposition is saying.

In the year of 1963, Martin Luther King was imprisoned for peacefully marching in a parade as a nonviolent campaign against segregation. In Martin Luther King’s essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the paragraphs that have the most emotional appeal are, just as the critics say, paragraphs thirteen and fourteen. King tugs at the reader’s emotions in these specific paragraphs using very detailed examples about the difficult, heart-wrenching misfortunes that have happened to the African American society and what they had to endure on a daily basis in Birmingham by using metaphors, contrasts, alliteration, anaphora, and imagery. As taken from an excerpt of “MLK - Letter From A Birmingham Jail,” In paragraphs thirteen and fourteen of Letter

Why We Can’t Wait written by Martin Luther King is a book that conveys the actual mind-set of many black Americans toward their freedom and emancipation. The social conditions for Blacks during the 1960’s were not that of freedom and liberty, but that of oppression and segregation. Martin Luther King makes use of a variety of stylistic, narrative, and persuasive devices to display his image of the harsh reality of the supposed “freedom” for blacks during the slowly progressing civil rights movement of the 60’s.

In the online article found on the CNN website titled, “U.S gun violence: The story in charts and graphs” the article provides the readers with multiple graphs from bar graphs to pie charts. The graph I will be looking at critically is titled “Firearm background checks by months since 2012.” It’s important to note that this article was written in December of 2015. For this reason, the graph stops on December 2015. Before providing the graph to its readers the author states that the year of 2015 was “was a record year for background checks on guns. Some have pointed out the requests for background checks have gone up after mass shootings, the idea being that shootings cause people to worry about their safety and buy a gun to protect themselves.”

The art of quoting and summarizing an argument is one of the main skills to acquire when it comes to writing a successful piece of work. In the book, They Say I Say the art of inserting quotations is mentioned to be one of the highest mistakes made by writers. Many insert a quote that has no frame of introduction or background information which is considered a “hit and run quote.” Readers need to be able to comprehend not only the writings, but the background information and quotes from another author writing in order to have the whole work cohesive. Dire necessity for the writer is to go back to the initial text and truly understand the background from which they are quoting to make sure their audience understands the quote and why

In “Bring Back Flogging”, Jeff Jacoby addresses the problems within America 's criminal justice system. He gives many reasons why imprisonment simply does not work, and suggests that corporal punishment should be used as an alternative. Published in the Boston Globe, a newspaper well known for being liberal, Jacoby provides a conservative view and directs his argument towards those who strongly support imprisonment and view corporal punishment to be highly barbaric and inhumane. However, in order to shed light on our current situation, Jacoby discusses the dangers that we face though our criminal justice system a nd shows concern that imprisonment is doing more harm than good. In effect, Jacoby looks to the past for solutions, and

In the narrative Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr., published in 1964, King describes the struggles African Americans faced to receive equal rights. During the 1960s the Civil Rights movement was in full swing. The year 1963 is referred to as the beginning of the “Negro Revolution”. In the introduction of this narrative King compares the lives of two African American children. By using one child from Harlem, New York and one from Birmingham, Alabama, King explains how they faced similar battles of poverty with limited opportunities. This showed how this problem was a national problem and not one that was just confined to the South. King used descriptive examples to explain the Civil Rights movement throughout this narrative. The two major themes throughout Why We Can’t Wait are racial discrimination and the use of nonviolence.

Throughout time, women have been considered housewives and mothers. Not all women stayed home, throughout history women have worked, mainly clerical jobs, teaching, charity workers, and other less demanding physical work. It was never a new thing that women were in the work force, it was the impact the propaganda posters and WWII made on the women in that workforce. This propaganda poster; titled “We Can Do It” features a beautiful women with her arm flexed and she is in her work coveralls, above her it say “We can do it.” the author is J. Howard Miller, he uses pathos and ethos to inspire a social movement that increased the number of working women, and changed the face of the workforce.