Letter From Birmingham Jail

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Do words have power? According to Wikipedia, they carry our thoughts, our ideas, our feelings and our intentions. In fact, in Greek, logos mean both word and container. Words have the power to provoke, calm, or/and inspire.

Words have the power to provoke. One example of this is in the open letter “Letter From Birmingham jail”. In “letter from Birmingham jail”, Dr. Luther King says “Some have asked, "Why didn't you give the new administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one before it acts”. Words such as “why didn’t you give the new administration time to act”, provoked Dr. Luther King to respond. Another example of words having the power to provoke is in the book “Rosa Parks”. In Rosa Parks, the author says “When Mrs. Parks said “NO” a passionate movement had begun”. The simple word “no” provoked people to start a passionate movement. These are two examples of how words have the power to provoke. …show more content…
One example of this is in the open letter “letter from Birmingham jail”. In “letter from Birmingham jail”, Dr. Luther King says “For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" almost always means "never." It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration.” The words “it has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment” tell the reader that for a moment, the word “wait” calms people down by “relieving the emotional stress”. This is one example of words having the power to
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