Martin Luther King Jr. - "I have a Dream" Short Commentary
Martin
Luther King Jr – “I have a Dream”
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s (MLK)
speech, “I have a dream”, delivered on 28th of August 1963, uses
rhetoric language and literary devices like Logos and Pathos predominately, but
also metaphors, anaphoras, amplification and others to create the mood of hope
and believe for African Americans. MLK wrote this speech in a tone of importance
to establish the idea of injustice for African Americans.
Martin Luther King delivered “I had
a dream” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the Capital, Washington D.C,
in front of two-hundred thousand people, both black and white. He delivered “I
have a dream” in front of the symbolic and historic monument because Abraham
Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, that abolished slavery for
African Americans. This is significant because MLK uses the metaphor, “…But one
hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the
life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and
the chains of discrimination”. MLK uses this metaphor to show that even that slavery
was put an end to, African Americans are still “chained” by the injustice of America
against them. MLK uses literary techniques to highlight the injustice in America
and inform/raise awareness to give home to his audience of African Americans
but all of America that believe in the movement.
The significance of context is effectively conveyed in the second paragraph and I completely agree with what you said about the Emancipation Proclamation in relation to MLK's stylistic devices. Some advise would be to further explain the way MLK conveyed his tone/mood and how it if affected by the context.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned the stylistic structure of the speech, with relation to contextual information about the historical influence amongst the African American community, like the emancipation proclamation. Though I would have preferred to go in depth about the use of rhetorical devices in both the audience and his stylistics/structure. Overall a good short commentary.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the way that you included pathos and ethos and mentioned his stylistic features and their affect on the reader as well as how they were used to make the argument stronger! I also really liked the way you put the speech into context of what was going on during the time. Well done.
ReplyDeleteYou have followed the task very well, including lots of information on the context of the speech, and the role it played. You brought in pathos and logos (wish I had done that). Improvement would be to use more quotes from the text, rather than just stating what is happening.
ReplyDelete