Casimiro Leon
Mr. White
Language Arts 2A Honors
29 October 2015
I have a Dream
In an era when few were inclined to hear, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood proudly. Martin Luther King, Jr's speech “I have a Dream” was very beneficial and inspirational for African Americans. Numerous factors affected the speech, the emotion behind his statement, delivering the speech on the monument of the Abraham Lincoln, the president who abolished slavery. To get the emotions from both sides of all Americans, King uses many rhetorical devices such as allusions, metaphors and similes, and anaphoras.
King’s use of allusions affected his audience by making his point of equal rights more powerful. Most of the allusions were focused at white people than it was to the…show more content… He starts by saying that although negro people are freed, they still are neglected, “crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” Which means that they are still being harassed and prosecuted by the white people. King then says “America has given the negro people a bad check” the check represents the negro’s right to equality because the abuse of them is obvious and the check “has come back marked insufficient funds” signifying they have yet to be aware like them. With that understanding of human nature, Martin Luther King Jr. compares gradualism to a drug, inferring that everyone has a proneness to unwind when things are “cooling off.” He urges all humans not to rest but to stand up “to make justice in reality for all of God’s children.” The uprising that may come to the country is coming back to “business as usual” which references currency. He says a revolution is upon “to lift our nation from the quicksands of the racial injustice” Which shows how he is persuading the people to stop the segregation and the inequality between white and black. All these represent underlying messages which lead up to tell the people to stop this social
