MLK - questions...

So... today we looked at some questions on MLK's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. From the last 2 lessons you should have discovered that MLK's speech is rife with metaphors. Metaphors are a type of literary technique known as "imagery" - which means.....?

It helps us (the reader) create a picture of what is being written/talked about in our minds.

So - for example - the metaphor filled line:

"One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination"

This evokes an image in the audience's mind of a black-man chained up, of the black-man as a slave. From this use of metaphor MLK vividly shows us the lot of the black-man in 1960s America. Although they are technically free-men, in reality they are still treated as slaves shackled not with chains and manacles of iron but by means of segregation (Jim Crow laws) and discrimination. They may not be physically chained anymore, but the white-man's laws and racist attitude towards the Negro population ensure that they are still not granted the privileges of the free-man.

Next lesson we will finish off the questions and then get started on understanding the purpose of speeches and persuasive writing before moving on to look at some specific rhetorical techniques used by speech writers.