Anthony Rizkallah

Throughout history, human rights were not won without a fight. Human rights are

humans being able to live a free life without abuse, and without strain from their government. In

three documents, there are stories of people who have experiences with not having their rights,

because of the unjust governments. In the documents “Birmingham jail, A genetics of Justice,

and Malala’s speech” , they share a central claim of the importance of standing up for your

rights, or else you will be left behind or hurt. Each of these documents use similar tools to get

their claims across.

Martin Luther king wrote a letter in jail called “Letter of Birmingham Jail” in August of

1963. The point of this letter was to encourage people to stand up against unjust laws against

African Americans. The central claim is “standing up for your rights, or else you will get

abused”. Martin luther king repeats the words “unjust laws” to really emphasize why people

should protest this. In order to get his claim across, King uses strong word choices. In paragraph

18 it states “hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks.” This was a reference to

compare how hard people should fight for their rights. Just the word “excruciating” makes

everything a bit more dramatic. In order to get the claim across, he uses strong word choices to

make the audience have a strong feeling, sympathize with him, and feel energised to get out and

make a change. The strong feeling that the author gives the audience is called “pathos”, and that

is spread throughout all of these documents. If they don't stand up for their rights, then they will

always be abused, and left behind without fair and just laws.

In a document called “A genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez, she demonstrates the

consequences of not having your human rights. Julia Alvarez and her family moved to America,

but they will always be traumatized from her past where they were abused from a dictator called
Trujillo. Throughout the document, Julia repeats strong word choices like “silence, and terror” to

show how little and scared they were from their government. It states in paragraph 18 “ Even on

American soil, they were afraid of awful consequences if they spoke out or disagreed.” By

demonstrating how they don't have freedom of speech, it shows how they became damaged. This

all relates to the same central claim of “the importance of standing up for your rights, or else you

will get abused.” Julia’s family was silent, and didn't have their rights, therefore they were

abused mentally and physically.

In “Malala’s speech”, a girl speaks out for children of taliban. Her goal was to make sure

that even taliban children can get an education. This also relates to the central claim in all of the

other documents that it is important to stand up for your rights, or else you will get abused. In

this case, not having an education is abuse. Malala uses parallel structure and repeats phrases a

lot like “I raise up my voice, we call upon, and So here I stand” in order to make her argument

stronger with pathos. By Malala using strong speech in her writing, it will make her seem strong

and courageous, and will give people a feeling to also join her. In the document it states “I

remember that there was a boy in our school who was asked by a journalist “why are the taliban

against education.” This is pathos, and it is used to make people have a sympathetic feeling

towards little innocent kids who just want an education.

In all three of the documents “Birmingham jail, Genetics of justice, and Malala's speech”,

there is a shared central claim. The central claim that they all have is “if you don't stand up for

your human rights, you will get abused. If King didn't stand up for their rights, then African

Americans would have to deal with abusive unjust laws. Julia Alvarez had to deal with abuse

from a dictator, because she didn't have the freedom of speech. Lastly, if Malala didn't stand up
for the rights of education, kids would be abused because they wouldn't be educated. They all get

their claims across by using pathos, parallel structure, and strong word choice.