Dr. Kings letter from Birmingham Jail is overflowing with emotional appeals. Dr.

King is known
as one of the prominent orators of all time, he, therefore, had to be an extremely skilled writer.
He was able to weave together pathos and logos into an extraordinary response to the
clergymen. If for some reason, you forgot or need a reminder of what we should direct our
swaying society away from you can simply read this and grow aware of the dangers of hate.
Mr. King used Pathos the most out of all three appeals. I'm sure he did this because it's the
fastest way to get your point across also because he needed people to understand him. The
response to the clergymen was and urgent request for understanding, towards Mr. King's goal,
which he wrote on behalf of the Black and African American community. Throughout the letter,
he uses imagery such as "ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky"
to make their struggles clear for those who don't understand. There is small spread out clusters
of figurative language such as "nagging signs reading white and colored", "living constantly at
tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and
outer resentments" or "no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair." His use of
imagery and figurative language is there to provide the readers a more visual way to understand
him. What is very commendable about his message is that the 4th sentence from this passage
is over 300 words long, he packs most of the page with it. He separates each scenario with a
semicolon and when you read the sentence it sounds like a list. A list who may not have meant
anything to some people. To understand the letter you have to be aware of who he's addressing
it to. Dr. King wrote this letter as a reply to the clergymen who did not want him in Birmingham,
however, he also wrote this to everyone else who regarded his peaceful protest as anything but
what they were, peaceful. MLK included personal anecdotes for example "when you take a
cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners
of your automobile because no motel will accept you" or "Daddy, why do white people treat
colored people so mean?. These may not be real but the statements stand, you couldn't get
away from racism in America.
Dr. King's use of logos is significantly smaller than his use of pathos. The first sentence "We
have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights". Kings use of
the public yet -at the time- a underacknowledged fact to remind how black citizens were and are
still mistreated. He also acknowledges how they were unable to freely take advantage of their
constitutional rights because of white people. He starts this paragraph with a fact, what his
reason was most likely that he wanted to reach out to the reader to understand his stand on
this. I assume Mr. King put a fact at the beginning to make you ponder if the mistreatment and
outcome of that mistreatment are as "out of reason" as people first thought. Mr. King used this
fact at the beginning as a sort of appetizer, then all the stories and examples filled with pathos
were the entree. Another place he used logos was in "then you will understand why we find it
difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no
longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our
legitimate and unavoidable impatience". He uses both logos and pathos in this sentence to
show how logical their reactions to society's disrespectful attempt of what should have been
non-public segregation and freedom.
King introduces ethos in a few different ways. They weren't wholly ethos in a few cases, and
they weren't all obvious. In particular, from "When you find your tongue twisted" all the way to
"and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments." This whole area is prominently
pathos because of its imagery. Dr. King uses his individual experiences to remind people that
he was affected by racism and is not just a glorified symbol being used to further a movement. I
assume MLK used a mix of both pathos and ethos in this area so he could inform while also
kept the readers interested and engaged in the text especially since the letter is considerably
long. Which is why I think he didn't focus on facts that much and stuck to virtue and personal
experiences. He didn't just pack the letter with facts or statistics on how this would affect
children or the elderly in future years, he put relatable experiences because as important as this
was to him, this may not have been as important to the clergymen. A method he would know
that would work is using his own experience to make the men and women understand. Another
example isPerhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to
say, 'Wait. Similar to the last quote he uses a mix of both pathos' imagery and ethos' morals to
say that anyone who hasn't personally felt what segregation is like would most likely wouldn't
have blinked at what it meant to others. Any place you find ethos it will most likely be morals,
not credibility or qualifications or citing. It's not a coincidence, people who have a brain or heart
would read this and change the way they treat people and their reactions.
In conclusion, Dr. King is rightfully one of the most influential orators and writers of the modern
time along with his work towards civil rights. He was able to construct speeches filled with facts
and persuade people into understanding his view which ultimately changed our country's history
with powerful well-thought-out letters and speeches.