Did Martin Luther King Use Rhetorical Devices In I Have A Dream Speech

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president during the civil war who wrote the “Gettysburg
Address”. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was the civil rights leader who gave the famous “I Have A Dream” speech. They both use parallelism, repetition, metaphors, and similes. This paper will analyze President Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr uses of rhetorical devices to achieve their purpose
.Dr. King’s purpose was to spread his ideas among his people to go back home and make a change for themselves. King used rhetorical devices to get his purpose across. Some examples of those rhetorical devices are when King says, “ Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern

cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.” The rhetorical device he used in this is him repeating go back to where they live and telling them that no matter where you go, there will always be racism, but one has to make the change for themselves.
President Abraham Lincoln’s purpose was to persuade the audience to continue the fight. He
persuaded them using rhetorical devices such as, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” This
part of the speech he claims the nation is being tested whether or not the country will stay
together. “That the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people
by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” This is telling the people to
continue the fight or the nation will fall apart.