I Ve Been To The Mountaintop Analysis

In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail, he argues that segregation is inhumane and is hurting the American society as a whole. All the time and energy that goes into segregation is slowing down the American society’s progress to succeed as a nation. He uses several rhetoric strategies that help adopt a tone that is both personal and logical. King was able to incorporate the rhetoric triangle into his letter and still managed to address his arguments. While using pathos, ethos, and logos, Martin Luther King Jr. was able use the clergymen’s accusations to successfully promote his own views and opinions instead.

The famous “I have a dream” speech given by Martin Luther King Junior (Jr.) sent a shock wave across the United States and forever changed the meaning of freedom and equal rights for all mankind. The way in which Martin Luther went about bringing change for the black man and woman was brilliant and very effective. Even though many things contributed to the Civil Rights Movement to bring about the radical change, Martin Luther’s rhetorical and stylistic devices throughout his speeches and articles drove his audiences to participate in the movement. He possessed a mastery in the art of motivational speaking and an understanding of language and rhetoric in order to transform an audience from passive bystanders to advocates and leaders of a greater

King understands where blacks are coming from in wanted equal rights. King sees the injustices of the black communities and is very involved in black movements which what what put him in jail. By being African American as well as witnessing injustices, King has firsthand knowledge which establishes his authority to speak on this issue of racial equality. King shows the audience that he is competent by stating that he is the President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This helps show his strength of leadership in the religious community. This also again shows his competency to speak on the issue of equal rights. He continues to establish empathy by stating how he normally doesn’t respond to criticism; however he chose to respond this time due to the “genuine good will” of the clergymen. That response in itself tells the clergymen that he and the clergyman are on the same playing field, one pastor to another. King showed the clergymen’s “good will” deserved a response which established trust. Creating an ethical appeal in a rhetorical piece is essential in persuading the audience to believe an authors argument.

Persuasive writing is most effective when all three rhetorical appeals, Logos, Pathos, and Ethos, come together to form an indisputable argument. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X are two of the most influential figures of the past few decades; similarly, their work is summarized as some of the most persuasive and controversial of all time. The audience of both of their pieces, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “The Ballot or the Bullet” include oppressed African Americans and the white oppressors themselves. Each man takes full advantage of the three rhetorical appeals to influence their audiences to support their radical theories about racial inequality in the 1960’s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is the most effective because of its hopeful emotions, irrefutable facts and, of course, the respected author.

In the letter, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” written by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 16, 1963, Dr. King is answering criticism from white clergy men. King stumbled upon a statement in a newspaper while in jail and felt the need to write on it. He did it to explain why he was in jail. After all Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a nonviolent protestor. Kings says “I am in Birmingham because in justice is here.” Dr. King wants to see a change. This paper will examine King’s uses of rhetorical devices to appeal to his audience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s letter “Letter from Birmingham Jail” reveals all three rhetorical appeals. It appeals to ethos, logos and pathos.

In 1963 Civil rights leaders, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letter to the men of the clergy, entitled “ Letters from Birmingham Jail” while stuck in the confines of Birmingham jail. King was thrown into prison on accounts of violence after a peaceful protest. As many of his fellow clergyman reported negative things in regards to king and his cause, he refuted with writing an open letter, in which he states his beliefs on equality for all as well as stating why he needed to stay in Birmingham to stop all the injustice. Throughout the essay, he uses many examples of rhetorical devices (i.e. Rhetorical question, redefinition, etc.) to illustrate that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The ability to write a powerful persuasive piece results from total awareness of available rhetorical devices as well as inspiration and determination. Over the course of “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, the author Martin Luther King Jr., demonstrates that he can effectively employ the use of rhetoric elements. The rhetorical strategy and context are two vital literary elements within a piece of writing that can be used to make a strong argument while appealing to the audience. King uses a combination of rhetorical techniques to rebut the criticisms of his fellow Clergymen about the nature of the Birmingham protests. King uses quotes from past civil rights leaders and vivid metaphors/similes to make a persuasive argument. He also uses

Introduction: Martin Luther King, employ rhetorical appeals to convince the Clergymen and Birmingham City about the brutal treatment the African Americans were facing during the Civil Rights Movement were unjust.

Throughout history, there have been very memorable texts. A lot of these texts have used rhetorical strategies to leave an impact on everyone that reads them. One text that resonated with me was written during the Civil Rights era, when America was being destroyed by segregation. That text is the “I Have a Dream” speech which was written by Civil Rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During the course of the speech, King uses various rhetorical devices to persuade his audience to believe that one day black and white Americans will learn to peacefully coexist in society.

In his speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Martin Luther King Jr. reminds his audience of the agony, strength, and resentment they feel due to racial discrimination through personification, imagery, equivocation, and anaphora. In doing so, King persuades his audience of protestors to apply nonviolent methods of reform to gain equality while propelling a newfound sense of energy and motivation into the movement. King begins his speech by integrating personification and imagery to emphasize the pain and destruction that such unfairness creates in order to unify and convince his audience to make a change in the world. Through equivocation, he stresses the strength in the unified force of the African American community to demonstrate that passive resistance enough to achieve success. King alludes to the audience's anger in order to rally the protesters and incite energy in their tedious journey of reform. The rhetorical strategies of highlighting the various pathetic appeals works for the intended audience of demonstrators because this movement for equality has a very emotional origin.

In addition to The Rhetorical Triangle here is another analytical tool that is similar to the triangle called SOAPSTone which help analysis rhetoric on a higher thinking scale by asking questions compared to The Rhetorical Triangle which only identifies the speaker, the audience, and the subject. SOAPSTone asks questions such as “how does the rhetorician present himself or herself?” to help in the process of analysing the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and the tone of the speech, The is speaker is Martin Luther King, Jr. he is the voice of the Civil Rights Movement; MLK Jr. was a well-respected and well-spoken leader. The occasion is King speaking at the Lincoln Memorial for a Civil Rights rally, he is speaking to share his dream of equality for all Americans. The audience of the speech is all the people of the nation, specifically those seeking and demanding equality, the main audience though is the Black Americans who want equality. The purpose of the speech is to obtain equality for all people, regardless of race, gender, religion. King’s goal is for everyone to be

Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer all delivered powerful, persuasive speeches that will go down in history. The use of these creative individuals’ language and persuasion played a pivotal role within the civil rights movement. We can observe this in the speakers’ rhetoric devices like ethos, logos and pathos.

In 1963, minister and rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech in front of Lincoln memorial to bring awareness to the unfairness of injustice for black people. King's speech was an effort to try and mandate the coming together of the black and white race and finally have the equality between us all be put into force for a free nation. As the speech left King’s mouth and entered 250,000 citizens ears, it left them to think about what point he was trying to make because he uses pathos, logos, and ethos.

Ms. Floyd and fellow classmates, my essay will illustrate how the art of rhetoric can spark a movement and bring change to our nation. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was famous for his inspirational speeches that showcased the epitome of rhetoric and solidified his place in history of being the most influential civil rights leader. One of those speeches, MLK’s “Give Us the Ballot”, energized the civil rights movement on May 17th, 1957. He was driven to action ever since the Supreme Court had ruled that segregation of schools was against the 14th constitutional amendment. This was a huge step forward for civil rights. Unfortunately, the states choose to ignore this landmark decision and the federal government turned a blind eye. This

With the people of The United States of America categorized as the audience, King speaks to people of all races and ethnicity. This discriminated audience included the grasping appeals to the ethos, pathos, and logos. As each appeal is fully informed of the rhetorical purpose, King finds a way to encourage all three. Through several metaphors and types of imagery, he makes the decision to speak to all of the appeals in order to accomplish to need for change. Clearly aimed directly at the hearts of blacks and making the whites feel ashamed of their actions brought together a turn in society as they knew it. This specific structure geared towards the audience was the main reason why King impacted Americans across the country and not just at the march. These different appeals mixed within the audience to help King influence his purpose of racial equality as each type of person could relate to his moving words.