Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail Analysis Essay Example

One of the most powerful letters of the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail has a lot to teach us. He wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail to defend his position for nonviolent direct action and to respond to local religious leaders’ criticisms of the campaign. Martin Luther King Jr. uses a series of rhetorical devices such as pathos, logos, and rhetorical questions to explain a multitude of things. 

In paragraph three, King states “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.” This would be an example of pathos because King is trying to get his reader to feel comprehensive, by giving knowledge to understand his thoughts. In paragraph 14, he makes his reader feel livid by making them feel strangulated from strong emotion. To do this, he states “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights.” There’s many more examples of pathos in The Letter From Birmingham Jail, but these are just a few of the many that I had found.

When using logos in his letter, King states “I am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.” in paragraph two. He makes a lot of sense by saying this, especially because he knows that he has duties that he needs to attend to whilst being there. Another example of logos is when King says in paragraph 14, “You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern.” He understands that some people worry about breaking the law whether it be just or unjust laws, and he understands that people’s fears can take over what they do and can push them away from breaking just or unjust laws.

In paragraph 10, King uses the rhetorical question “Why direct action? Why isn’t negotiation a better path?” and I think he wants his reader to think about why he did one thing rather than another, to make his reader think about what could’ve happened if he used negotiation rather than taking direct action. Another form of a rhetorical question being used is in paragraph 14 when King asks, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” Here, he’s trying to get people to think about why people might break certain laws but refuse to break others.

In conclusion, Martin Luther King uses many rhetorical devices to explain a multitude of things. He uses rhetorical devices such as pathos, to get people to feel a certain way; logos, to make a logical argument; and rhetorical questions, to try and get people thinking about things in a certain way. Overall, Martin Luther King’s letter is super lengthy, but has a lot of things to learn from.