MLK Paragraphs

  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.