Martin Luther King
Jr.’s intended audience are the African Americans of the U.S. during the 1960’s
who have suffered physically or mentally from the racially discriminating “Jim
Crow” laws that are in effect in multiple states. He aims to, through his
speech, persuade the African American communities to rebel passively against
the “Jim Crow” laws and the government that keeps them in effect. Martin Luther
King Jr. presents his speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, the
president who abolished slavery, to help to evoke the emotions of injustice in
his audience. He is able to successfully persuade them to join his cause after
he uses pathos, an example is when he states that “But one hundred years
later, the Negro still is not free.” To emphasize, by performing his speech
to his audience on the steps on Lincoln Memorial, he is able to fulfill his
purpose of persuading his audience to fight against racial discrimination. To
add, Martin Luther King Jr. begins to speak of the history of African American
slaves, pointing out the states that have treated the African American communities
the worst, such as South Carolina. To summarize, by doing so, Martin Luther
King Jr. is able to appeal to pathos as he provokes anger through speaking
about the wrongs the government has committed on the African American community
a century ago from his speech.
In the speech, “I
Have a Dream”, Martin Luther King Jr. uses a speech structure that is much like
a narrative, using “I” and “we” as he speaks of the African American
communities’ pasts in slavery to speaking of their today and what they can do
tomorrow, whilst including stylistic devices, such as metaphors, to help appeal
to pathos and ethos. To give an example, a metaphor that Martin Luther King Jr.
uses is “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take
the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” By using this metaphor, Martin
Luther King Jr. is appealing to pathos to persuade the African American
population to rebel against their day-to-day discrimination instead of enduring
it for the sake of the country’s new ‘future’. Yet another stylistic device
that Martin Luther King Jr. uses in his speech is anaphora. An example to point
is when he speaks about the origins of his audience stating “Some of you...”
before every possible community that his audience may have travelled from. The
use of anaphora allows Martin Luther King Jr. to ‘point the finger’ at multiple
African American communities and not only let them feel included, but expose
them to how they, and their communities, have not truly escaped from slavery as
the government states they have but have, instead, been the victims of “creative
suffering”. This allows Martin Luther King Jr. to appeal to pathos as he
acts on the fear and anger directed towards the “Jim Crow” laws of his audience
but, it additionally appeals to ethos as this extract informs the audience of how
Martin Luther King Jr. understands what the African American communities live
through and how they are treated by the white government. To add, Martin Luther
King Jr., as well, uses asyndeton in the next paragraph “Go back to
Mississippi …” where he addresses states that discriminate the African
American communities more severely. He again appeals to pathos by acting on the
fear and anger of the African American communities, appeals to ethos for
understanding the suffering the African American communities face in those
states and, to include, appeals to logos for being knowledgeable of the
severity of the “Jim Crow” laws in those states and of understanding the
situations the African Americans that live there have to face, such as extreme
police brutality, constant ridicule or a lack of access to common rights and
necessities, such as being able to sit in the front of the bus or drinking from
the same water fountain as their white counterparts. To conclude, by using
these stylistic devices, Martin Luther King Jr. portrays how he not only
understands their situation and has experienced it as well, but, by using “I” and
“we”, he is able to express how he also feels what his audience feels;
fear, anger and a need for change.
