At the time, Birmingham was one of the harshest places to live in America for African Americans; white supremacy groups would set off bombs to instill fear in the black community and withhold racial integration, and peaceful protests and sit-ins were met with unjustifiable police violence, in addition to the suffocating social qualms surrounding the black community (Eskew). In this example, King employs antithesis to highlight the logical structure and urgency of his argument against inequity, which allows him to establish logos. Prior to the mid 20th century, social injustice, by means of the Jim Crow laws, gave way to a disparity in the treatment of minorities, especially African Americans, when compared to Caucasians. Just as well, King uses his aspirations to create ideas within the listeners. Parallelism/ Juxtaposition. Firstly, and most daunting, is the constraint of the letters audience. King organized various non-violent demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama that resulted in his arrest. Additionally, as he confesses to the clergy, King employs antithesis to create a rational structure that fosters logos: I agree I cant agree; small in quantity big in quality and shattered dreams hope (521 & 524-525). He writes of his own problems that may apply to the daily struggles of the abused African, Parallelism In Speech From Birmingham Jail, Throughout the speech, another scheme King uses frequently is parallelism, the strategy of repeating similar clauses, several times. Martin Luther King Jr. uses both logical and emotional appeals in order for all his listeners to be able to relate and contemplate his speeches. These encompass his exigence, at its most simple and precise, and validify the importance behind transforming the country in a positive way. MLK uses both ways to gain the attention and agreement of the audience but, he uses pathos not just more, but in a more relatable way in order to appeal to his audience. Additionally, personable elements such as tone, inflection, and overall vindication behind the letter are left to be determined by the rhetorical language. Throughout the Letter from Birmingham Jail, ethos, pathos, and logos are masterfully applied by Martin Luther King. During this letter, King then uses the time to unroot the occasion of nonviolent protests in BIrmingham and the disappointing leadership of the clergy. In his letter he uses examples like when you have seen hate-filled policeman curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters. and when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and gathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim to make his audience envision and feel what many negroes felt while watching their families put up with this mistreatment. Furthermore, good usage of these rhetorical device . Here, King combines divergent interpretations of justice to demonstrate the gravity of the injustice that he confronted in Birmingham. Since Kings arrest he had time to think deeply about the situation; therefore, he decides to reply back to the Alabama clergymen. King goes on to write that he is disappointed that white moderates care less about justice and more about order. One example of Kings use of pathos appeals to the audiences emotions by showing Kings confidence in his endeavors. In Letter From Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King responds to the subjectivity of law and the issue he paramounts by using precise and impactful rhetoric from inside of his jail cell. King gives a singular, eloquent voice to a massive, jumbled movement. King does this in an effective and logical way. To summarize, Martin Luther Kings rhetoric is effective and ultimately changed the course of the Civil Rights movement for the better. This audience is rhetorical as the social and political ideologies of the American people fuel democracy and are able to change the system around them through collective effort. : "There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community." . Parallelism is a literary device in itself, but it is also a category under which other figures of speech fall, such as those mentioned previously. for only $11.00 $9.35/page. His use of diction and syntax would align his mission to Gods, and show that he was in the right and the clergymen were in the wrong. Repetition in "The Letter from a Birmingham Jail" Ethos Example "A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. These circumstances lead us to our next rhetorical focus: audience. Lastly he shows ethos by using authority in his speech by using quotes from two very famous documents. His mention of involvement and leadership within a Christian civil rights organization, strength of religious analogy, and general politeness are effective rhetorical choices used to shape how he is perceived despite his critical response, racial setbacks, and arrest: a relatable man of faith, rationale, and initiative. The rhetorical choices referenced above are riddled with pathos, also known as language utilized to persuade the audience emotionally. Thus, these essays are of lower quality than ones written by experts. When Dr. King first arrived in Birmingham, trouble occurred when he and fellow activists were . With his respectful nature, humility, compassion, optimism, and determination, King responded to a group of white Alabama clergymen who had condemned the civil rights protests as extreme in their open letter, A Call for Unity. Although his letter was directed towards a small group of eight men, his words eventually reached the minds and hearts of the entire country. Even now, it continues to make generations of people, not just Americans, to give up their racist beliefs and advocate social colorblindness. MarkAHA. Ralph Abernathy (center) and the Rev. In the same manner, King believed that people could unite to combat oppression. IvyMoose is the largest stock of essay samples on lots of topics and for any discipline. Here are more examples of parallel structure within "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that I find especially powerful. From the very beginning of it , King brings his crowd back to the origin of America when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, that freed all slaves and gave hope to the former slaves. King specifically wrote to the white clergymen who had earlier addressed a letter to him as to why he was apprehended, in which they argued that his actions were untimely and unconstitutional. Any deadline. In order to dispel any misguided ideas that whites have of the Negroes fortune, King tells them directly that Negroes are in poverty as everybody is blocking them from entering the ocean of material prosperity. The second time King uses antithesis is when he states that Nineteen Sixty-Three is not an end, but a beginning, which he aims to express that the revolution will not stop at 1963; rather it will have a new beginning. King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, including hundreds of schoolchildren. The constraints surrounding Martin Luther Kings rhetorical situation include the audience, the rhetorical exigence of the situation he is responding to, Dr. King himself, and the medium, all of which are deeply connected. However, the racial divide was legislated in 1877 with the implementation of Jim Crow laws, which lasted until 1950. He uses rhetorical devices such as repetition, analogy, and rhetorical questions. Martin Luther King Jr. twists the perspective of his audience -- Southern clergymen -- to create antithetic parallelism in Letter from Birmingham Jail. King through this letter tries to express his, "Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from Birmingham Jail, which was written in April 16, 1963, is a passionate letter that addresses and responds to the issue and criticism that a group of white clergymen had thrown at him and his pro- black American organization about his and his organization's non- violent demonstrative actions against racial prejudice and injustice among black Americans in Birmingham. Dr. King wrote, This wait has almost always meant never. This is why Dr. king addresses this matter in a letter about the battle of segregation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., along with many other civil activist, began a campaign to change the laws and the social attitudes that caused such a disparity. MLKs use of pathos and repetition is an effective way to persuade his audience about his position on civil disobedience. Correspondingly, King urges the clergy to reconsider the horse-and-buggy pace of their methods of action through his logos. In Martin Luther King Jrs I Have a Dream speech he effectively uses ethos, diction and powerful metaphors to express the brutality endured by African American people. Any subject. the exigence is the continued condemnation, segregation, and prejudice afflicted against African Americans since the emancipation of the slaves in 1863. There isn't quite as much of that in "Letter From Birmingham Jail," but it still pops up a couple of times. By clicking Receive Essay, you agree to our, Essay Sample on The Effects of the Atomic Bomb, Essay Sample: The Development of the Braille System in Nineteenth-Century France, Constitution of The United StatesResearch Paper Example, Hippies In The 1960's (Free Essay Sample), Positive And Negative Impacts Of The Columbian Exchange, Essay Sample on Early River Civilizations. The continuous mistreatment of African Americans for over a century was, at last, deeply questioned and challenged nationwide with the growing popularity of the Civil Rights movement, and the topic of equality for all had divided the country. The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and, Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong leader in the Civil Rights movement, the son and grandson of a minister, and one heck of a letter writer. Dr. King was the foremost civil rights leader in America in the 1950s and 1960s who was ordained minister and held a doctorate in theology. By addressing his respect for the clergymen, feigned or not, he is acknowledging the effectiveness of respect to those in power, whether they may or may not deserve it. This use of parallel structure emphasizes how just and unjust laws can look deceptively similar. " Any law that uplifts human personality is just." Get professional help and free up your time for more important things. Through powerful, emotionally-loaded diction, syntax, and figurative language, King adopts a disheartened tone later shifts into a determined tone in order to express and reflect on his disappointment with the churchs inaction and his goals for the future. In Letter From Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King responds to the subjectivity of law and the issue he paramounts by using precise and impactful rhetoric from inside of his jail cell. Another instance of parallelism in the letter is, We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people(Barnet and Bedau 745). Identify the parallel structures in the following sentence from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and explain their effect. Yet his most important method of reaching his audience, and conveying his enduring message of equality and freedom for the whole nation was his appeal to pathos. In response, King emphasized that justice is never timely, and the refusal to acknowledge equal rights was inhumane and regressive. While the Civil Rights movement superseded the dismantling of Jim Crow, the social ideologies and lackadaisical legislature behind anti-black prejudice continued to rack the country far into the 1960s. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was this line, "We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right." King was the leader of the African-American Civil Rights Movement as well as an activist for humanitarian causes.
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