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

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In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, wrote his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. He wrote this speech because he wanted to tell all politicians that everyone should have equal rights. He wrote this speech because of the growing problem of segregation. The speech is about how there should be equal rights for all people, no matter what race they are. Throughout the speech, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tone is passionate, motivational, hopeful, and angry. His speech is filled with tons of figurative language, imagery, repetition, and allusion. However, the most influential feature of the entire speech was symbolism because it greatly affected the audience, expanded the purpose of the speech,…show more content…
uses to symbolise the cruelty, and pain of racism is landscape. In his speech, he compares things to mountains and valleys. For instance, in his speech, Dr. King says, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and 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.” By saying that the mountains and hills will be made low, he is actually saying that everything wrong about the world, like prosecution, will be made right, and all of the world’s problems involving racism will meet an end. Just like when he said everything crooked will be made straight; when things are crooked they are usually deformed or wrong in some way, and when you make something crooked straight, it fixes the problem. This informs the audience on how King wants to stop racial injustice and fix all of the problems with the Negro people. He also says how he wants calleys to be exalted. A valley is low and below ground level, and he wants valleys to be taken up higher. What MLK is trying to say is that he wants all the people who are are treated as lesser individuals, to be risen up and treated equally. It makes sense that King would use mountains and valleys to symbolise the unequal rights of people because mountains are very tall and above ground, while valleys are low and below ground. Mountains and valleys are not equal, and during this time period, white people were the mountains, and black people were the
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