The Rhetorical Analysis Of I Have A Dream Speech

Register to read the introduction… He reminded listeners that Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation 100 years before, yet the Negros were still not free. He emphasizes this point by repeating " one hundred years later". King stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and opened his "I have a dream" speech with the expression "Five score years ago," which is an echo of Lincoln’s words. A literary device that has a lot of influence is his use of metaphors. “One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination...". Further on in his speech, King used repetition (anaphora) of the words "I have a dream" and "Let freedom ring" as an important device to emphasize his points. In the beginning of this speech, King begins by saying ' I ' as he moves further on into the speech he uses no real subject, but towards the end he uses 'we' and 'our'. The speech starts in the past , then goes into the present, and finally into the future. Furthermore, his speech starts off with short sentences, but as we move on the sentences get longer. King also makes a few allusions to the Bible; "Let us not seek to satisfy thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred," is the first allusion to the Bible in his speech. King does not want the equality-seeking listeners to go out and use force or start a war to achieve their freedom because then it would give the whites a reason to …show more content…
Whereas Kennedy's speech gave the people exactly what they wanted to hear. Kennedy's speech contained much more figurative language than King's speech, although King did include a fair bit. I think Kennedy's speech was more developed than King's speech because Kennedy had more literary devices and structure to his speech. Obviously Kennedy had highly educated speech writers to do this job for him whereas King wrote his speech by