Rhetolical analysis - Essay Example

ill go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” Although some paid little attention to his words, his speech perpetually constituted civil rights in the souls of majority of Americans (Leff and Kauffeld 181). King’ speech had a way of persuading the American people with powerful words, in fact, he remains to be one of the world’s greatest orators. In his deliberative speech, he notably uses Ethos, Logos and Pathos to convince Americans that racism and discrimination was not the way to go to achieve the American Dream.

King’s uses figures of speech to stress certain words. For example, the use of inversion and anaphora stresses the aim and main points in his speech. He states that “one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

” He also uses experience and metaphors to show his audience what discrimination and racism has done to the American society. His own experience is incorporated in the speech when he says that “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” And metaphors when he says that “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds.

" To bring authority to his speech and project that he is worth listening to, King uses Lincoln who is a respectable figure, the American Constitutionan and God. In his analogy of Lincoln, he states that “Five score years ago, a great American, in