Rhetorical Analysis Of What Is Your Life's Blueprint? '

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Civil Rights activist and Baptist minister Dr. Martin Luther Kind Jr. once gave a speech to Barrat Junior High Students: a speech they will likely never forget. In,"What is Your Life's Blueprint?", Dr. King hopes to inspire the youth of that school by urging them to be the best that they can be with an extremely sympathetic and zealous tone. He supports his argument with a varied use of juxtaposition, parallelism, anaphora, and extended metaphor to name a few. To begin, Dr. King enhances the social perspective of low wage, unexceptional jobs with juxtaposition, appealing to students who have no other options in their life. These students are stuck because of scholastic achievement or financial situations, and by comparing a undesired job -- street sweeping-- with famously accomplished artists, it is very encouraging. In the text, he states," sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures...like Beethoven composed music...like Leontyne Prince sings..." What matters is not the mediocrity of one's career path, but the attitude and approach one has towards it. The students should not be discouraged they will end up a street cleaner, but worry how they will do said street cleaning to the best of their ability, and this is the emotional effect Dr. King has on his student audience. …show more content…

King is inspiring with the help of parallelism. A student aspires to be the best of the best. However, Dr. King refutes this. In the passage, he states," Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be the sun, just be a star." He appeals to the emotions of his student audience when he stresses on how the quality of work is more important than the status. He supports his previous focus on attitude and ties back to the street cleaner analogy. One does not have to be a street cleaner, but if you are, be the best street cleaner you can

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