The Letter from Birmingham Jail

Christina DeSario
Mr. George- AP Eng 11
10•07•09
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther King, Jr. was trying to convey, within his letter, why whites should give up their high social monopoly and give he oppressed blacks their rights as humans. With his strong words and phrases, such as, "blasted hopes" (740), and "dark shadow" (740), he hopes to draw the readers emotions and attention to the cause he feels so strongly toward.
He uses words that would hit home for the readers. Everyone has felt blasted hopes. Everyone has felt suffocated in a dark shadow. When King uses these words, he hopes they will appeal to the emotions of even his hardest critics, because even the most racist people on earth are still people, and they have all felt despair at one point in their lives or another. If King could possibly arrouse sympathy in them, then a miracle would be preformed, and the Civil Rights Movement would be put to a favorable end.
King uses a tug-of-war between pathos and logos. He will slide gently into pathos and then pull tightly back into logos so as to not wear his reader down and criticize him more for wasting their time with his life’s story. The balance is just enough that he can show them glimpses of his life and his hardships, and by his hardships, he alludes to those of everyone of his race, by saying often, “... vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers... drown your sisters and brothers... kill your black brothers and sisters” (742). He goes into talking about the children, which would pull on the heartstrings of those who are not racist but have kept quiet, those in the “appaling silence of the good people” (745-746) catagory.
Right after talking about children and unrelated family, he goes into logos. He answers his own rhetorical questions by asking, “‘how can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer is... that there are two types of laws. There are just laws and... unjust laws.” He hands you the answer to the question that was on the tip of your tongue, and he goes into further detail. He silences you with logic that he puts in an agressive way, and you find y6ourself unable to think of another question and simply agree with him because he has such an amazingly conveyed message that it just sounds right.
He forces you to see segregation from his point of view, from the point of view of the oppressed, instead of from the point of view of the oppressor. His words make it real, and he does this by showing you a small, dramatic snippet of his life and then pulling back into logic, but you are so caught up in his situation, such as with his children, that the logic just flows through you and settles itself in you.
He never comes out to attack white people or racist people. He never does anything to make himself sound angry or bitter or superior, even though he had all the right to do so. He was brilliant and angered by the pain the white community had inflicted on him. Instead, he spoke as if they were on good terms, never insulting them or even being passive agressive. He lets the reader know when he is disappointed, but he never even goes as far as to say that he was angry. He just sounds like a wise parent explaining a difficult situation to a child who can not quite grasp the concept of what he has done.