King's "Letters from a Birmingham Jail"

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the use of rhetoric in King's "Letters from a Birmingham Jail." The paper discusses the major elements of appeal to logic, emotion and ethics, with detailed examples to support each style. This paper other further mentions other rhetorical elements in the context of supporting these basic elements.

From the Paper:

"In Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," he writes to his fellow religious leaders, ministers and clergymen who had written an open letter asking him and his fellow civil rights activists to stop demonstrating. He writes using incredibly powerful language and demonstrating elegant and precise rhetorical skills. King uses a wide variety of rhetorical techniques, primarily taking the form of an Aristotelian deliberative oratory. His focus is examining the question of whether or not civil rights activists should discontinue their direct actions of civil disobedience for the sake of maintaining order and the status quo, or whether they had an obligation to God and justice for all to continue. King, of course, argues that not only is he right for doing what he has been doing, but that there is a civil, moral, logical and ethical imperative to do so."

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