A Rhetorical Analysis Of Mlk's I Have A Dream Speech

Rhetorical Analysis of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech In the long struggle for equal citizen’s rights for African Americans, many influential leaders arose to protest the injustice. Among the many brave speakers stands Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., famous for his “I Have a Dream” speech, concluding the March on Washington for African American equality. In this well-known speech, Dr. King employs numerous rhetorical strategies throughout as he describes his powerful view on African American oppression by its own society and equal rights. King uses effective rhetorical devices such as metaphors, antanagoges, parallelism, and allusions to convey the negative effects social oppression has on Blacks and the necessity for a simple remedy: equality in American society. The rhetorical device of metaphors was most commonly used in Dr. King’s speech. The harsh struggle of the Black person in America was related through King’s detailed metaphors and comparisons. In the first paragraphs, King uses an extended metaphor about the purpose of his speech saying, “We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” (King, 1). He claims how the US owes Blacks what they were guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence: “the unalienable
For example, King simply quotes, “1963 is not an end but a beginning,” (King, 2). King incorporates this technique to describe his “dream” that very soon, civil rights will finally be shared with Black people in America. He states later on, “Though, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream,” (King, 4). This encouraging antanagoge displays the evident hope Martin Luther King has that his people will, one day, see social justice. The use of antanagoges accents the optimistic and hopeful tone of the piece by negating a negative idea by placing a positive idea next to