Martin Luther King Jr. Activist, teacher, fire-eater, friend, literary and rhetorical genius. In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I have decided to analyze his famous, "I Have A Dream," speech.
Dr.King uses anaphora frequently in his speech, repeating the phrase, "I have a dream." King repeatedly says this to put impact on his views towards the racial divide in the at the time. He also uses a few metaphors sporadically throughout his speech, for example, "In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check…It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”(King 1963). Martin Luther King continues to use more rhetorical devices like allusion when he says something similar to a quote from the sixteenth President of the United States and the "Great Emancipator", Abraham Lincoln, "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation."
Martin Luther King Jr.'s words have impacted so many peoples everyday lives and the way many people think. If you really think about it, slavery ended in 1863 which isn't as long ago as we think. Jim Crow ended in 1950, which isn't even 100 years old. Martin Luther King has influenced groups like Black Lives Matter to protest peacefully instead of using violence.
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