Letter from a Birmingham Jail: the Rhetorical Analysis - Essay Example

Letter from a Birmingham Jail: the Rhetorical Analysis and All the Important Info

When the war in America was at the high point, some eight clergymen made an announcement that the street protests from Dr. King Luther are supposed to come to an end as the protests are encouraging violence and hatred. Those clergymen did not like the nonviolent form of disobedience in order to acquire the civil rights for the blacks; indeed, they thought that it would be a good idea if the blacks and white come together and settle their issues. Also, they thought by doing this it will bring the nation together and the whites and blacks will unite. The clergymen viewed Dr. King as an outsider who is not from their community and wants to spoil things in Birmingham. They then ordered him to be arrested and was put in jail because of conducting a protest.

While in jail, Dr. King then wrote the Letter from a Birmingham jail that was addressed to the men to tell them that he had all rights to be in the city. Also, in his letter, he expressed his feelings indicating that he has moral reasons for why he was protesting. He then uses some devices which are rhetorical to convince even the people of America. Those devices used are the ethos, logos and pathos. By the use of these devices, they enabled him to take his letter to his audience and obtain the kind of support he required for the civil war movement. For his argument to be strong, he uses various devices to express his points.

He once served as the president of a certain conference which works on the southern parts. It was mainly formed to fight for the rights of the black to help them stop being oppressed and their aim was to do this using tactics that are nonviolent. He and his other group members came to Birmingham to help one of the other group member who was a member in their group. They were to help him come up with a nonviolent thing that would work on overcoming the oppression of the blacks.

The state needed something at the time to enable them calm down on the blacks as there was serious brutality by the police officers and some of other officials of law concerning the blacks. He viewed the country as the worst in terms of racism issues in America and his aim was to restore justice and peace to everyone in the country.

For his argument to be strong and efficient, he tends to use various rhetoric devices in his letter such as parallelism. An example is where a father has to look for a good answer for his little son who asks why the people are so harsh towards the blacks. Also, there is the use of repetition which indicates the many times the blacks have been harassed. In this case, parallelism is used for the audience to keep thinking about how the blacks face unending mistreatment.

Where else, using repetition is a way to show the audience that the oppression happens regularly to the blacks. Another rhetoric device that Dr. King uses is a metaphor and is to help the audience to imagine the picture of the harassment they undergo with nowhere to run away to. The black are therefore, have nothing rather than looking at the freedom and opportunities that the white people get in society. Another thing is like they are placed in a cage which makes them fewer humans as the treatment is that of animals in which they seem to have no rights. He has various devices in his letter which makes the audience view his arguments as reasonable because he himself has his own experience in seeing the harassment the blacks face and endure. Therefore, by using metaphor and parallelism and repetition, his audience gains a better understanding of his arguments. After that, they and can show sympathy for him, and would then be comfortable to support his aim of stopping the oppression of the black people in the city using tactics that are nonviolent.

For Dr. King, he is able to capture the reader’s attention and also enable them to have sympathy of the kind of injustice the black people have faced and endured at the city in America using pathos. He tends to explain the injustice, mistreatment and brutality in-depth on his personal experience and with this, the audience will therefore be able to gain understanding of the problem at hand and will therefore choose to stand with him as opposed to the clergymen. The clergymen defends their opinion by saying that the city police are ensuring there is order and preventing the violence to happen which appears not to be true. Dr. King on the other hand presents his argument by telling how brutal the police are to the innocent Negroes as their dogs skin the people who are barely armed. It enables the audience to see how the police are violent and brutal towards the innocent people who are unarmed and nonviolent but protesting in a peaceful manner. The audience then sees the police as inhuman people. Also, they find out that the police are no longer protecting their community rather, they are doing great harm to it by oppressing the black people.

Dr. King informs his audience that the discrimination and isolation do bring effect to every person. He goes ahead to explain that a case of injustice is a great threat to the justice at every place. It’s a place where anything that affect one person in a direct way may therefore affect everyone in an indirect manner. Therefore, it is an indication that every person despite their race is been affected by the injustice going on in the America city of Birmingham happening during the 1960s. Also, in case there are part of the people facing oppression then the remaining people cannot succeed in their lives. Due to the audience knowledge in this, they will be willing to bring change to the community.

He then indicates the effect that is brought by the isolation, racism and discrimination on the whole community which makes the community not to progress in any way. By deeply explaining what happens, the audience becomes aware and are not able to have sympathy with all the people that have been oppressed and face injustice. Also, they tend to agree with Dr. point of view and to sympathize with all the others. By selecting phrases and sentences that brings out the emotions of the readers, the audience clearly understands his point of view and strongly supports his point of view and gives him their support in his doings during the time. Therefore, the audience was willing to sympathize with the black people and the harsh treatment they have faced rather than the clergymen and the officials from the government whose work is to deceive the people of the society.

Therefore, for him to be able to convince the clergymen together with the other Americans about his standpoints, he should have his facts and good reasons at hand. For him to do this, he uses the method to deeply explaining his arguments. Some of them are an issue which has not been solved in the city. Such issues are that of bombing the churches and homes of Negro which are very many in the city of Birmingham compared to any other place. Those issues are critical as they are hard to believe. Therefore he has to come up with good facts that will provide a piece of reasonable evidence for the injustices that have been happening to the black people for the audience to believe. For him, he has not only increased his trust in his audience but also increased his argument as a whole.

In conclusion, Dr. King Luther was a well-known person and an influential member of a group during the 1960s. he was therefore able to inform the people of America the level of injustice that was happening among the black people. With the use of his rhetoric devices such as metaphor, repetition and parallelism he was able to draw the readers attention and gain their understanding of the issue. He then deeply elaborated his argument which enabled him to gain sympathy from his audience. By capturing the audience emotions, he then gained their support on his argument. The use of the rhetoric devices made the letter display strong feelings and that is the reason Dr. King arguments are remembered up-to-date.