Letter To Birmingham Jail

Words: 655
Pages: 3

Formative figure in the modern civil rights, Martin Luther King, in his letter, "Letter from Birmingham Jail", makes an important statement about civil rights and civil disobedience in 1963. King's purpose of the letter is to help recognize that a nonviolent approach to reconstruction social order could be used. King adopts an emotional tone, pathos, in order to appeal to his reader to make them feel some of the segregated community feels. First, King displays an emotional tone in "Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myth and half-truths" (647). This line gives the audience the ability to feel that if people can break the ties of segregation once before then …show more content…
Here King uses pathos to get the audience to feel that he wishes that someone would praise the segregated community that has stood up to the violence and hatred that they had endured. As King goes on in his letter he describes the real heroes at the time to give the audience the real picture of the violence that had been endured. For example , "They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women.........who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses"(657). These lines come across to the audience to feel some emotions because if an elderly person hurt whether self inflicted or inflicted on by someone else, the emotions that are felt is sadness and hurt. Also it gives the audience the sense that a older person on a bus no matter what color they are should be offered a seat and makes the audience feel that maybe she was tired from standing up. King uses an emotional tone, pathos, to appeal to his audience in Letter From Birmingham Jail. Furthermore, the letter helps to explain that a nonviolent approach could be used to help to reconstruct social order. King is one of the most formative figure in the modern civil rights in