Rhetorical Analysis of "Letter from Birmingham Jail" “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” quoted by Martin Luther King Jr. He was an American Baptist minister, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. During the civil rights protests, he was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama because for protesting without a permit. Some realized arresting Dr. King is the best idea. However, Dr. King did not let jail block his …show more content…
The writer's tone is indignant. He recognizes the argument and is corrective without being harsh towards the clergymen. He delivers his message by appealing his audience with logical reasoning and arguments. In the beginning of his letter, he gives a response to the clergymen’s claim that the demonstrations were unwise and untimely. To support it, he states that the Negro community had no alternative except to prepare for direct action. He delivers his message with emotions. King conveys how the police force are being commended for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." Examples of police force is the releasing of the dogs on people and their treatment toward the people. He states that the dogs' teeth sinks into unharmed and nonviolent Negroes. He says that the clergymen would not support the actions of the police if they observed their treatment toward the Negroes in city jail. He appeals to emotions in his letter a great deal to convey to the clergymen how wrongly they are viewing the conflict. At last, he delivers his message with authority and legitimacy. Martin Luther King proves himself very credible, dependable, and intelligent by appealing to the reader ethically. He reveals that he is the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. This clearly establishes his …show more content…
uses repetition, , and allusions. Parallel structure involves two or more words, phrases, or clauses that are similar in length and grammatical form. An example of a parallel structure is “ Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the lord” far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own hometown.” Periodic sentences were used to emphasize his idea of unfairness of whites treating the African-Americans. The whites have no idea how the African Americans are oppressed. He uses the world “wait” to show how the African Americans felt. The multiple sentence-after-sentences gives a description about how African-Americans have less human rights which opens the reader's eyes to the hardships of being an African-American during the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr. uses allusion. An allusion is an author's reference to a person or thing with which his or her audience is presumably familiar. He uses historical figures ,such as Adolf Hitler, Socrates, Aristotle, Jesus Christ, and Nebuchadnezzar, to make a comparison.He compared himself as an extremist same as Abraham, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, Saint Paul, and Thomas