I Have A Dream Speech Rhetorical Devices

Martin Luther King Junior’s “I Have a Dream” speech was essential in ending the oppression and discrimination against the black population of America. At the march on Washington he addressed the entire nation in an attempt to unite them to end racial discrimination. The majority of his speech was an allusion to Abraham Lincoln’s Ghettysburg Address and it borrowed many devices that Lincoln used to catch his audience’s attention. His use of anaphora, antithesis, and countless instances of metaphors captivate and move the reader to his goal. First, his ude of anaphora is easy to see throughout the entire speech and is clearly used to emphasize relevant points he is trying to make. In the second paragraph he begins many sentences with, “One

Later he speaks about a “promissory note” and “check” when reffering to what America promises its citizens in the terms of freedom. He says that the black population has received a “bad check” in that they have been denied what they were promised by America. He also mentions the “storms of persucution” and the “winds of police brutality” in reference to the violence the black protestors go through. He brings up this not long after reminding the audience that they must peaceful in their protest to draw extra attention to the uneccesary violence shown to them. King’s use of metaphors is used most often to demonstrate how bad the discrimination and segregation of the black population is. In conclusion, Martin Luther King Junior’s “I Have a Dream” speech is a grand alluaion to Abraham Lincoln’s Ghettysburg Address and was given to unite a nation divided by race. He delivered the speech at the Lincoln Memorial and for the same reason Lincoln delivered his. He also used many of the same literary devices that Lincoln used in his speech to unify and capture the attention of his audience. To this day, King’s speech has been a proud reminder of the stand against racial discrimination and an event rooted into history books for ages to