Letter From Birmingham Jail Figurative Language Essay

Martin Luther King Jr., a clergyman and an activist for the expansion of African American rights, was known for putting together non-violent protests to combat against racial inequality. King was mostly active throughout the 1950s into the 1960s until his assassination in 1968. He was known for his “I Have a Dream” speech, and was also the author of the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, in which he refutes against the white clergymen who say that his non-violent protests were “unwise and untimely.” One of the reasons that he had so much success was because he effectively appealed emotionally to the audience. Within this letter he uses allusions, parallelism, and various types of figurative language effectively to get his point across to its readers. One of the elements that King used effectively in the letter is the allusions, which is a reference in the text to something outside of the text. For example, he referred to himself as an Apostle Paul like figure, because they both traveled out of their hometowns to share their beliefs with others, and they …show more content…
Parallelism is when the same general structure is repeated across the text. When King was explaining the different famous extremist who people know and follow each day, he started each sentence with “was not”. This repeated phrase is an example of parallelism. Another example is his famous quote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The repetition of the forms of justice is the parallelism. Another example is when King states, “We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’” This is an example of parallelism, because the phrases, “everything Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’,” and “everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal’” both maintain the same structure, therefore making it