Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From A Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King Jr. was and still is one of the most well-known writers and speech givers. As all do, King has his own style, his own way of delivering the idea he was trying to get across. This style -his style, involved an excess amount of metaphors and descriptions. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, king says "... but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.” This is an amazing example of King's style; it is rich with metaphor and over-flowing with visual concepts. But what are they and, more importantly, why are they? King describes a horse and buggy to express the slow rate in which the United States is moving in the terms of social and political equality. The entire sentence
is meant to express that the U.S is taking much, much longer than it should to reach an end of segregation and/or racism in general. Uses this metaphor creates a strong and obvious image of a slow rate; as well as specifically picking a horse and buggy rather than say, oh I don't know, a snail, installs this idea of old-timey ways that need improvement. The metaphor strongly impacts the reader and easily delivers the idea that the U.S is not advancing properly.