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Rhetorical Analysis Of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Speech

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“The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.”(Dorothy Day) “I have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr. is the most compelling speech. He used figurative language to help support his dream that all men will be able to be given the same treatment.
Blacks won’t be satisfied until they are free. Martin Luther King Jr. uses imagery and diction to get to this point. This speech impacts all of American’s lives”...unspeakable horrors of police brutality…” (King, p2). This is diction because he uses words like unspeakable to explain that no one has any words to say about what the whites are doing and why they are doing it. “Negro in Mississippi cannot vote…”(King, p2). This is an example of imagery because it gives an example of where(Mississippi) and what(Blacks …show more content…
wants all men to be equal,the segregation to be over and freedom to ring. Martin Luther King Jr. uses repetition and imagery. “Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.”(King, p4). As you can see there is lots of repetition in that quote because he want us to know that he wants freedom to spread. He wants it in New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and California. “...Stone Mountain in Georgia… Lookout Mountain of Tennessee… hill and molehill of Mississippi.”(King, p4) These couple of lines creates an image inside your head of where he wants his freedom. “And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true .” (King, p4).
Martin Luther King Jr's “I Have a Dream” speech is most compelling because he uses figurative language to help support his dream that all men will be equal. “ Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.” (Jesse

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