Pathos In I Have A Dream Speech

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In his speech, “I Have A Dream…,” Martin Luther King Jr. uses all four appeals to persuade the audience. Pathos is the most readily used throughout the speech, and the most effective. In the beginning of the speech, King describes how one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed all slaves free, blacks and whites are still not equal. The second paragraph on the first page reads, “One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still badly 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.” He adds, “So we’ve come here today to dramatize this shameful condition.” …show more content…
The repetition of personal pronouns increases towards the end, implying unity of blacks and whites, which is his “dream.” For example, King states, “We cannot walk alone” and “We cannot turn back.” The short syntax in these two sentences suggests expediency and relentlessness. Anaphora is shown on page 3, with “We can never be satisfied…”, which continues onto the top of page 4. This case is clearly pathos, because he takes this moment to give examples of blacks’ inequality with whites, such as “We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their adulthood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating ‘For Whites Only.’” On pages 4 and 5, King describes his dream of an ideal America, and his tone becomes passionate and optimistic. Most Americans are ethnocentric, therefore making this last part of his speech very effective, as once again, he appeals with pathos. Everyone wants to hear that our country will be perfect one day, but some just do not have hope. King has hope and tries to establish that in every single member of his audience. He believes that the key to brotherhood and overall prosperity is the equality of blacks and whites. After reading his speech, I was highly persuaded by his argument, especially with the appeal of pathos, and I wish our country could solve this still-current
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