Rhetorical Analysis of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech

Within this quote there are multiple metaphors that help bolden King’s thoughts: “crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination,” “island of poverty,” and “vast ocean of material prosperity.” These metaphors explain how it still felt nearly impossible to end discrimination, and how Negroes are on their own with no support. The use of the metaphors display a deeper and stronger meaning to the topics that King was passionate about. These rhetorical devices brought to the non-colored portion of the audience’s attention of how difficult the life of a Negro was and that freeing the slaves one hundred years ago was not enough.

Martin Luther King Jr. was the man who wrote the speech entitled “I have a dream” and presented it to nearly 250,000 people on August 23, 1963. In that speech, MLK Jr. used several different types of figurative language/rhetorical devices in order to convey his message to the people on a deeper level. These devices include personification, allusion, symbolism, hyperbole, metaphor, simile, and anaphora.

In this speech, King utilizes diction throughout, such as "we," "America" and "free." Words like "we," and "America" in the same sentences and same speech, gives everyone, African-Americans, the feeling of being equal and they deserve to have the same rights. Thus giving hope to everyone that they will, one day, be equal in everyway and have the same unalienable

He refers to the principles voiced by the nation's founders in his appeal for racial equality. This strategy was especially important in light of the fact that the government was concerned that the Civil Rights movement might discredit the United States abroad. The government was worried that if they gave African-Americans freedom, the United States would be seen as weak and have been persecuting innocent people. Hence, it was perceptive of King to imply in the speech that he is not undermining the United States, but asking the country to do justice to the principles that were asserted to be the backbone of U.S. politics and society. King states, for example, that his dream was "deeply rooted in the American dream," (King 2) and that he dreams of a day when Americans "will be able to sing with new meaning `My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing'" (King 3). King then uses the words of that song to distinguish the different areas of the country where he hoped the United States would soon "let freedom ring" (King 3) for all its citizens. King alludes to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as being a "promissory note" (King 1) to all citizens, which those at the march were claiming as their inheritance. The speech gains power from King's stressing that he was asking the United States to live up to its principles and thus to fulfill the greatness of its pronounced creed.

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.

In addition to King’s uses of allusions, the speech contains many contrasting metaphors and similes that influence his audience very effectively. He begins by pointing out that even though Negros are freed from slavery, they are still slaves “crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” King then goes on about how “America has given the negro people a bad check” whereas the check in this instance symbolizes their right to equality because the mistreatment of the Negroes and racial discrimination is evident and the check “has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’” meaning they have yet to feel what they too, are guaranteed. With that understanding of human nature, Martin Luther King, Jr. compares gradualism to a tranquilizing drug, implying that people have a tendency to relax when things are “cooling off.” But he urges for his people not to relax and to take charge “to make justice in reality for all of God’s children.”

Like instruments in an orchestra being brought in one by one to a melody that fills the ears of its listeners and drives out any other thoughts, King then targets the white moderate population, the white voters. He tries to place this audience into the shoes of the black people by giving vivid descriptions of the trials they have been going through and invoke empathy in their hearts. He says: "When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your brothers and sisters at whim . . ." This statement brings up an issue every culture has had to deal with, death. Death in the American culture is one that is associated with loss and grief. King deftly imposes this loss on the shoulders of his white audience making it clear to them the pain the black people have been dealt.

When King gets up there to speak, he knows that he is fighting and uphill battle and the only way to persevere is with the power of numbers. King does what not many can do through the power of speech, he makes a nation realize that there is know true constraint holding them back from making change for the better of their great nation. King uses multiple metaphors in his speech to connect with the audience and create and emotional bond, one that they can relate to, a bond that unifies the masses to feel and understand what King is

African American Baptist minister and activist, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “I Have a Dream” speech, addresses racism against Negros and demands equal rights and freedoms. King’s purpose is to motivate his audience to join him in fighting for what they deserve. He shifts from an urgent, demanding tone at the beginning of the speech to a more hopeful and patriotic tone towards the end. Throughout the speech, Dr. King appeals to the audience’s desire to better their futures by utilizing figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, and rhetorical devices such as repetition and parallelism.

By speaking to everyone as `his friends,' King was already pushing the notion that they were all the same. Friends tend to be of the same status and have respect for one another, King showed that although he was black and oppressed, he still was on the same level as, and had respect for his white oppositionists. Also, this same idea is supported by the fact that King chose to write the essay in first person using I and you instead of a formal third person speech. By choosing to speak this way, King puts his issues onto attainable terms and is a technique used to interest his audience and make them aware of the reality that indifference regarding racial segregation is not something that only affects others, but I, you, us, and we.

King begins his story of the black americans by pointing out how children are treated the same as adults and to encourage the audience to feel sorry for the children. He appeals to periodic rhetorical questions, such as,”Was freedom a force?” and “ Why does misery constantly haunt the Negro?”. All that Black Americans wanted, was to be free of racial discrimination; however the White Americans had a different idea of “freedom” for them. He asks why do bad things happen to blacks. He states that even though they have committed no crime, they are treated as criminals. People that are being discriminated have nothing to be sorry for. By using rhetorical questions, he is trying to emphasize the biggest

He questions the audience about society and what they have done for their community. “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality; we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities; we cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one; we can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity,” (King). King knows how to bring the people into the speech to involve every single person standing before him and make them feel like they are apart of the speech. He mentions what has been taken away from them which creates anger within the crowd. King’s ability to appeal to the audience through emotion affected society for decades after and changed the sense of pride the African Americans had.

Throughout King’s speech, he uses the rhetorical mode, pathos, to give the audience an ambience of strong emotions such as sympathy. For example, whites had

One of Dr. King's most influential devices is his pristine use of repetition in order to drill his points across and reel the audience in. He goes on by describing the poor conditions faced by African Americans due to segregation that is ultimately at the fault of the government. Also showing how their African brothers are being taken away to fight for a country that does not see them as equals. His use of repetition is seen in statements such as: “...their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die…” and, “For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence….” Dr. King intends to stress the idea of this injustice in order to rally the people against the lack of civil rights by humanizing the countless African Americans who had died fighting for a nation that will not fight for them.

King is able to unify the protesters, encourage them to rise up together, and defeat the atrocity of racism by alluding to their anguish through personification and imagery. For example, King recognizes that “the nation is sick”(King 2). King assigns human qualities to the nation in order to comment on the offenses committed against the African Americans by the people of the nation. These offenses remind the audience of their common struggle and unify them. In doing so, King reveals that this is an issue but it can be resolved and the audience can heal the nation as they would a human being. Imagery in King’s speech also develops the intensity of the distress African Americans face. To illustrate, King describes “thirteen hundred of God’s children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights” (King 4). This gut-wrenching image causes the audience to feel immense sorrow and anguish for the African Americans depicted. These emotions are uniform in every member of the audience and thus unites them on an emotional level. A pathetic appeal is integrated into King’s argument to stop this pain and