Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream Speech

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a major Civil Rights activist, delivered his famed “I have a Dream” speech on August 28th, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in the heart of America, Washington D.C., during what is commonly referred to as the “March on Washington.” King stood before a massive crowd, representative of the nation, containing Civil Rights activists like himself, dignitaries, and ordinary black and white American citizens. King adopted a passionate, hopeful, and confident tone as he spoke about the racial injustice that was corrupting America and urged an end to segregation in order to achieve racial equality.
King relates the idea of racial injustice to his audience passionately, confidently, and with an edge of hope

through an extended metaphor. He begins his metaphor by comparing cashing a check to demanding equal rights. He elaborates on this idea and explains that, “When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” He gets to the point of his extended metaphor in the end of paragraph three when he declares, “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.” He then draws the last line of the metaphor, connecting America’s promises to a bank of justice in paragraph four and proclaims, “we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.” This device was strategically chosen by King in order to relate to the audience in terms everyone could understand, the full extent of the racial injustice. The powerful image of a “bank of justice” with “vaults of opportunity” in which every American citizen has the right to cash a check that will guarantee “the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” proves that African Americans are entitled to equal rights, appealing to the entire audience’s logos, including those that do not support the Civil Rights movement. By stating the racial injustice in such objective terms, King creates a logical argument that cannot be denied. On top of that, King arouses the emotions of his audience with this patriotic metaphor and stirs the crowd’s anger, sadness, and hope by emphasizing the sense of being cheated out of something that was rightfully theirs.
In addition to strong metaphorical language, King implements numerous historical and Biblical allusions to illustrate the wrongness of racial injustice with confidence and passion.

His first notable allusion takes place in the opening sentence of his second paragraph when he begins with, “Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” He references both the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. He also ties the Declaration of Independence into his speech when he quotes that all citizens, “would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and later on when he states that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” He goes one step further with allusions and pulls in Biblical scripture several times. Some of the most noticeable of which are when he describes his dream that one day, “every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together,” when he references the “cup of bitterness and hatred,” and when he preaches that they will never be satisfied, “until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Each of these prominent allusions strengthen his argument considerably and allow him to fortify his call for an end

to segregation and racial inequality with logic and historical purpose. They appeal to the audience’s logos with their factual and historical context and especially in the case of the Biblical allusions, contribute to King’s ethos by adding credibility and an aura of hallowed truth to his words.
King then turns to repetition, particularly in the form of anaphoras to emphasize his passionate viewpoint of racial injustice and to to inspire confidence that there is hope for the future. There are countless examples of this rhetorical strategy throughout his speech but the most prominent examples are when he implements anaphoras and begins several consecutive sentences the same way, such as, “one hundred years later,” “we refuse to believe,” “now is the time,” “we cannot be satisfied,” “go back to,” “I have a dream,” “with this faith,” and “let freedom ring.” The strategic use of this device emphasizes the passion, confidence, and hope that he’s trying to convey to the audience. They enumerate on wrongs of the past, the fervor of the present, and the potential bounties of the future. They also serve to create a sense of urgency and strength that appeals to the pathos of the audience, calling on their shared grief, anger, faith, and hope to compel them to persevere and win equal rights.
King glues all of these strong rhetorical devices together with immaculate diction that accurately paints King’s picture of racial injustice with passion, confidence, and hope.

King creates a momentous and passionate purpose with his formal diction as he includes imagery like, “the red hills of Georgia,” and “the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.” He also emphasizes the idealistic undercurrent of his speech by using reptivititive language such as, “freedom,” “faith,” “hope,” “dream,” and “justice.” The particular manipulation of language in this speech creates a simultaneously unifying, patriotic, and passionate diction that drips with formality and vision. His diction serves his speech by emphasizing his message and highlighting his urge to stop racial injustice. It also impacts his audience very powerfully by stimulating pathos in such passionate ideals as patriotism, justice, equality, and hope. King’s diction ultimately tied together his speech and made it a true masterpiece in which logic and emotion worked harmoniously to lay a formidable foundation that gave King the authority to call a nation to

change.
On August 28th, 1963 in the capital of the United States of America during the historic “March on Washington” in which hundreds of thousands of American citizens, ordinary folk as well as Civil Rights activists, black as well as white, flooded D.C. and listened to Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. deliver one of the most famous and influential speeches in American history. King used extended metaphors, allusions, anaphoras, repetition, and diction as well as countless other rhetorical strategies impeccably, to analyze the true extent of racial injustice passionately, confidently, and with hope.