A Non Rhetoric Analysis on I HAVE A DREAM by M. L. King Jr.

   I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

Whom am I imitating? -------Martin Luther king jr. the famous civil right leader in the 20^th century.

Why is his speech so memorable and eloquent?

Some people have analyzed the rhetoric devises used in the speech. They are

-----repetition

-----Parallelism

-----Simile and Metaphor

-----Contrast

    Used in speech, repetition not only makes it easy for the audience to follow what the speaker is saying, but also gives a strong rhythmic quality to the speech and makes it more memorable.

King uses

----“I have a dream” nine times;

-----one hundred years later” has been repeated 4 times;

----“Now is the time to…” has been used four times ;

----“we can never/cannot be satisfied as long as…” has been used five times;

----“Let Freedom ring…” has been repeated as many as nine times.

sure you can find lots of them in the presentation I am giving you. Here I don’t want to analyze from this point of view any more but some other respects.,

·         Facing the Reality: All men, black men as well as white men, should be guaranteed the Rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Based on the principle----All men are created equal. But the fact is,

-----America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
     so king said to his people:

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.  
      We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."