Rhetorical Analysis Of Letter From Birmingham Jail

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King’s tone in the opening paragraph is clam, polite, and sarcastic. Even though it is a response he writes to someone who criticizes him, he still presents his argument in a polite way. There are no negative attitudes such as anger expressed in the opening paragraph, and he sounds really calm, although he was in jail when he was writing. King utilizes irony in the opening paragraph to make the serious response he is going to present sound less heavy and intense. When he is saying that “if I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work”, he indirectly explains the fact that he has never been stopped by criticism, and the reason that he does not …show more content…
King first explains that he has the responsibility to be there because he is the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the affiliate of the organization in Birmingham has asked him to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program in paragraph 2. Then, in paragraph 3, he further explains that the essential reason that drives him to go to Birmingham is because injustice is there, and he needs to fight for it because it is what he should do to protect the rights and freedom of African Americans. Later on, He makes his explanation even border in paragraph 4, saying that he will fight against injustice for not only Birmingham but all communities, making the his trip to Birmingham sounds more meaningful and necessary. If King reverses the order of these paragraphs, there will not have such a powerful effect been gradually built up from the surface to the depths, and the audiences will not understand the meaning of King’s trip as easy as they
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