parallelism in letter from birmingham jail
In Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter From Birmingham Jail and I Have a Dream speech he uses many different rhetorical devices. Recent flashcard sets. 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. 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. King writes the letter to defend his organization's actions and the letter is also an appeal to the people, both the white and black American society, the social, political, and religious community, and the whole of American society to encourage desegregation and encourage solidarity and equality among all Americans, with no stratifications according to racial differences. Dr. To get a high-quality original essay, click here. 1, no. Dr. King was arrested, and put in jail in Birmingham where he wrote a letter to the clergymen telling them how long Blacks were supposed to wait for their God giving rights and not to be force and treated differently after, In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail from jail in Birmingham, Alabama in response to a public statement issued by eight white clergyman calling his actions unwise and untimely. 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. To this day, Kings speech remains one of the most famous and influential speeches in. He said that one day we won 't have to worry about our skin color and segregation and that we 'll all come together as one. In paragraphs 33 to 44 of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s response to A Call for Unity, a declaration by eight clergymen, Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963), he expresses that despite his love for the church, he is disappointed with its lack of action regarding the Civil Rights Movement. To summarize, Martin Luther Kings rhetoric is effective and ultimately changed the course of the Civil Rights movement for the better. If your first two elements are verbs, the third element is usually a verb, too. King uses pathos to invoke anger, sympathy and empathy, his impeccable use of logos makes his argument rational to everyone, and his use of ethos, especially the use of biblical references, makes his opinions more reliable. This special lyrical and parallel structure helped get his main points across and allows a large audience to understand simple but powerful words (Layfield) . During this letter, King then uses the time to unroot the occasion of nonviolent protests in BIrmingham and the disappointing leadership of the clergy. Introduction. In sum, all rhetoric has an external situation in which it is responding to. Consequently, King fabricates logos as he urges African-Americans to demand justice from their oppressors, an issue that directly affects everyone across the nation: not just those in specific areas. In "Letter from Birmingham Jail", King implements antithesis -- along with his background as a minister -- to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Southern clergymen, as he attempts to further diverge the two diametric rationales; thus, he creates logos as he appeals to the audience's logical side and urges African-Americans to act punctual in their For example, to use parallelism in a sentence in which you list a series of elements, each element typically has the same form. Here are more examples of parallel structure within "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that I find especially powerful. Dr. King brought people up and gave them hope that one day everything will be taken care of and we 'll all be happy, he said that one day we 'll have peace and love among each other. Who had criticize Martin Luther King because he was simply doing something that was right and violence was not needed for King. Parallelism is useful to emphasize things and ideas to the audience, which, like all the other tropes and schemes. 25 terms. "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," written by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, describes a protest against his arrest for non-violent resistance to racism. Letter from Birmingham Jail is addressed to clergymen who had written an open letter criticizing the actions of Martin Luther King, Jr. during several protest in, Letter from Birmingham Jail is a letter written by Martin Luther King, Jr. while he was in jail for participating in peaceful protest against segregation. In each writing, he uses the devices for many different purposes. Bitzer, Lloyd F. The Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. This evidence, revealing MLKs use of pathos, was used to reach out to the emotional citizens who have either experienced or watched police brutality. While his letter was only addressed to the clergymen, it is safe to assume that King had intent on the public eventually reading his letter, considering his position within the Civil Rights movement, use of persuasive rhetorical language, and hard-hitting debates on the justification of law. 1, Penn State University Press, 1968, pp. In parallel structure, a writer repeats the same pattern of words or/and pattern of grammatical structure. Ralph Abernathy (center) and the Rev. Any subject. Throughout the letter, Dr. King does a tremendous job of supporting his argument with the three elements of Aristotles rhetorical appeal. Therefore, as King fabricates antithetic parallelism, he constructs logos and persuades the audience to take prompt action against injustice through the careful juxtaposition of inverse statements. King gives a singular, eloquent voice to a massive, jumbled movement. Choose one type of reason and cite an example from these lines. Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham Jail. The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 29 Jan. 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/letter-from-a-birmingham-jail/552461/. Other than the speechs heartwarming and moving content, Kings effective structure along with the usage of all three rhetorical modes and certain rhetorical tropes and schemes has revealed the reason I Have a Dream as a masterpiece of rhetoric and it persuades hundreds of thousands of people support the blacks instead of treating them. Finally, King uses antithesis one more time at the end of his speech, when he writes when all of Gods children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands. The pairs he mentions are all the direct opposites of each other, yet he says that they will all join hands together and be friends. However, this constraint did not ultimately halt the spread of Kings message nation-wide, as it became a persuasive landmark of the civil rights movement, likely due to both his impactful position and persuasive use of rhetoric. Although Dr. Kings exploits are revered today, he had opponents that disagreed with the tactics he employed. In this example, King employs antithesis to highlight the logical structure and urgency of his argument against inequity, which allows him to establish logos. Read these passages aloud, and as you do so, feel their undeniable passion and power. King uses parallelism to add balance and rhythm to his rhetoric. There are three main considerations to make while analysing a rhetorical situation: the constraints, the exigence, and the audience. He hopes that this letter will stop this injustice matter, and show what the African American desire. The way Dr. King constructs his argument is as if he was preaching his argument to his congregation. It elucidated the exigence behind his letter as his presented rationale behind his arrest only made unjust laws appear more asinine and questionable by relation. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust(Barnet and Bedau 742). "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" "United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. In Martin Luther Kings Jr, Letter from Birmingham Jail the letter was a persuasive attempt to get Americans to finally see the inequality in the United States of America. He hopes that "[o]ne day the South will know that [the Negroes] were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream" (47), and that "the evil system of segregation" (46) will come to an end. While his supporters nation-wide were avid, determined, and hopeful, they were challenged by the opposing, vastly white population, comfortable in their segregated establishments and racist ideologies who would certainly weaponize his viewpoints. In the same manner, King believed that people could unite to combat oppression. Here, King offers disparate hypotheticals to illustrate the necessity for brevity in his acts. 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. Some clergymen, mostly white American men, believe the nonviolent protest Dr. King and African Americans were during was "unwise" and "untimely". Pathos are present more often in the I Have A Dream speech, mainly because he is bravely facing a crowd, speaking from the heart, rather than formality. During the era of the civil rights movements in the 60s, among the segregation, racism, and injustice against the blacks, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial to deliver one of the greatest public speeches for freedom in that decade. All of these factors influence each other to shape rhetoric, which Bitzer describes as, pragmatic; it comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself (3), with Martin Luther Kings. Parallelism, in the way King uses it, connects what seems like small problems to a larger issue. Martin Luther King's 'Letter From Birmingham Jail' 16 terms. What type/s of rhetorical device is used in this statement? Initially, the eight Birmingham clergymen are the audience and while they were not overtly racist, King uses rhetoric meant to have them understand his urgency. Martin Luther King Jr. writes his letter while being held in Birmingham Jail after being arrested for participating, in a non-violent anti segregation march. He was able to further interact with the audience; they were able to hear his voice, listen to the intended tone behind his words, see his face, and study his demeanor in the face of adversary. King is not speaking only of racism; he is speaking of injustice in general.