"I Have A Dream..." Speech Assignment

    Martin Luther King Jr. uses metaphors in his "I have a Dream..." Speech. "This sweltering summer of the Negros legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality." King compares the legitimate anger of African Americans to sweltering heat and freedom and equality to invigorating autumn. "I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice." He is referring to Mississippi, a state where some of the worst offenses against blacks are mostly being carried out. By specifying the states in the south, Dr. King wishes hope to those who are suffering. 

    Dr. King uses ethos in his world famous speech. "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation." This shows that not only Martin Luther King was fighting for black equality. Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president who also wanted blacks to be treated equal as whites. "We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now." King uses the Lincoln Memorial as a place to present his speech because it seems to be a holy location, and he finds it accurate to present it there because of Abraham Lincoln, who also believed in black equality.

   Dr. Martin Luther King uses hyperbole throughout his speech. "I have a dream today that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight." King exaggerates that everything will be fixed if blacks were treated equal. "It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment." The nation is not actually falling apart if people underestimated the "urgency of the moment." He wants his audience to create a sense the urgency that he sees.