Accepting Ideas?

In everything you read the main focus is to get the reader to accept the idea of the author, but first the author has to understand how the mind works. The mind uses different parts to analyze the idea, immediately there is a guard, then a moral test and a logical test. In order for the mind to accept an idea, the idea must have evidence supporting the idea whether good or bad. In the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. uses all three parts of reasoning to get his point across. He plays on the reader’s emotions causing them to feel empathetic for the African-American population, this type of appeal is called pathos. King uses ethos, which makes the reader place the idea against the moral test, questioning if the idea is morally acceptable which is ethos. Then uses logos to point out the logic in his ideas. Using all three parts he accomplishes getting the reader to understand his idea, that discrimination is an emotional attack and is morally and logically unacceptable.

If an author grabs the reader in an emotional way, they allow their defensive block to be unguarded. Dr King first portrays a situation of when the reader has to explain to a six-year-old child that Fun Town is closed to color children, immediately this starts working on the guard. “ When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Fun Town is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscio...

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...pt the fact that the idea is morally acceptable; Dr. King uses the example of how brutally the African-Americans are mistreatment in the city jail. Logos explains how logically this idea makes sense; Martin Luther King Jr. uses how America is punishing the robbed instead of the robber. All in all having an emotional connection, passing the moral test and the logical test the mind can accept the authors idea.

Works Cited

King, Martin Luther. "Letter from Birmingham Jail." English 121 Readings Pikes Peak Community College. Boston, New York: Benfords/ St. Martin's, 2010. 112-26. Print.

Lunsford, Andrea A., and John J. Ruszkiewicz. Everything's an Argument: with Readings. Vol. 5. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. Print.

Lunsford, Andrea A., Paul Kei. Matsuda, and Christine M. Tardy. Everyday Writer. 4th ed. New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. Print.