MLK

Christina DeSario
Mr. George- AP English 11
10•12•09
Letter from Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail

Martin Luther King, Jr. makes an argument within his letter from his time in Birmingham jail to the white clergymen who objected against his actions of equality for his fellow oppressed blacks. King tells his story in a simple manner, making it easy for people to understand and sympathize with. Like the rebelling Americans in the Revolution, he has the cause on his side. While his letter would be naturally passionate, his brilliance enhanced it by his use of logic, character, emotion, syntax, and diction.
King used very little logic within his letter. He used it only when he was answering rhetorical questions. He says, “nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue” (King 740-741). That is one of the only times King uses logic in his letter. What he is saying is that he wants to do something to force the white people to look at the problems and humiliation black people of America are forced to live with. He is saying that, through nonviolence, people he is opposing will not become defensive or stubborn, but they will be able to willingly see the other side because they are not being forced to do anything by a people they do not like or do not yet accept.
Character plays a part in the letter. Martin Luther King, Jr. shows his character within the first paragraph when he answers his fellow clergymens’ obviously offensive objection with maturity and respect. Instead, he says, “but since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely put forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms” (738). When the clergymen, people who should have agreed with him and backed him up; men of the white church who follow God and should act within His laws that all people are equal said that his actions were untimely, King refrains from becoming impatient with the word that he had heard so many times in the past from white people who were supposedly on his side. He instead writes a patient, calm letter explaining in reasonable terms why he can not wait.
Emotion plays the biggest part in King’s letter. It is the element with which he based everything around. Without grasping the emotions of the readers, he would make it no where with his plea; for the people did not like him or any of the blacks, and they were unwilling to give up their high social statuses to mingle with the blacks who had been below them for generations. The black community jumped from despised slave to acknowledged acquainance, and the whites of that era were unwilling to allow them to then jump to equal neighbor.
The emotions he intertwines with each word are at times subtle, such as when he says, “lukewarm acceptance is a much more bewildering than outright rejection” (745). He is not making a strong point here of social injustice, he is forcing the clergymen to look inside themselves. He is urging them to pick a side by saying that they have hurt them more than outspoken racist people. This makes the reader to choose where they want to be and what they want to do. Men of God do not want to sit on the sidelines and hope for the best. They work for God because they was happiness and equality and to spread the Word of God, which is exactly those things. Telling a man of God, or anyone on the fence about the issue of equality in America in the sixties that he has hurt black people more than the KKK is something that makes a person turn inward and choose a path.
King uses other subtle devices to allow you to peek at the injustice he experiences. He says things like, “I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit” (743). That is not outright terrible, but when one reads into it further, you realize that it was because he was black and because he was parading for equality. That was the reason he was arrested- not because he deserved it, but because the people simply did not like his dark color skin or his noble cause of equality.
There are a few emotionally strong arguments he uses against the readers to really grip their interest, pity, and empathy. He uses children, and how they must learn early that something very trivial keeps them from being able to do things that children should be able to do. King’s simple and heart-felt explanation of doing that makes parents think of their own children and how it would hurt them to have to tell their beloved children that they were social outcasts because of something that they had no control over- their skin color. The situation he writes out is one that parents can not ignore, because parents have a soft spot for children: “...when you suddenly find your tongue twisted... as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park... and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told Funtown is closed to colored children, and see... clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky...” (742). King knows that whites and blacks have the same feelings, but whites are still ignorant of that, so he uses something that brings the two of them together: the love for their children.
When it comes to diction, King’s words are chosen with consideration to the tone of his letter and his letter and his audience. He uses words like injustice, bleakness, and most importantly, nonviolence. Nonviolence is a word he uses often to stress the way he is willing to go about his plans. He never once threatens to use violence. Instead, he warns that he must act, or violence will break out: “If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence” (747). He is using the use of nonviolent to hammer it into the heads of the oppressors that he is not willing to put any lives or wellbeing at stake.
King uses parallelisms and juxtapositions to make his point more clear. The syntax he incorporates makes certain points stand out: “Was not Jesus an extremest for love?... Was not Paul an extremest for the gospel?... Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremest?” (747). Normally when one would think of the word extremest, they would think of a terrorist group, but here he twists it to give the infamous word a peaceful meaning. He criticizes the church before reassuring the audience that he is “a minister of the gospel, who loves the church” and criticizes it with love and not as an outside hater of religion.
King uses his knowledge of syntax and diction to make the people listen to him. He incorporates emotion, logic, and character to help the readers understand where he is coming from and how sincere he is with the cause. The way he makes the white community of the 1960s listen to him is not only a miracle, but proof that Martin Luther King, Jr. would stop at nothing to nonviolently sway the whites to believe in his cause of equality.