A Critique Paper: I Have a Dream

By: Martin Luther King Jr.

“I Have a Dream” is a public speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr., an American
civil rights activist during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963,
in which he called for an end racism in the United States and called for civil and economic
rights. He pleaded for true independence for the Negro people and for equal treatment to its
entire people, either black or white. Aimed at the entire nation, King’s main purpose in this
speech was to convince his audience to demand racial justice towards the mistreated Negros and
to stand up together for the rights afforded to all under the US Constitution. The main point of
the speech can be seen all throughout the speech; that all men are created equal and that there
should be freedom for all, civil rights.

First of all, to get the attention and interest of the audience/readers, a speech must have a
powerful introduction and King just did that. King starts his speech with the assertion that
despite the execution of Emancipation Proclamation, a presidential proclamation and executive
order issued by US President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, that changed the federal
legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African American in the designated areas in the
South from slave free. King observed that, “one hundred years later, the Negro still not free”. He
advises his audience to protest peacefully for their rights and uphold their stand against injustice
until they are assured equality. He admires the courage that his audience had shown during their
hardships. He shows his audience his dream of justice for everyone and advises his audience to
work with the faith in freedom to attain those dreams.

Second, King’s speech was well structured. At the beginning of the speech it was about
the history of African Americans, of how they were treated. Then, he went on to the present time
wherein they are still mistreated and they were given a “bad check” and so on that he preceded to
his dream of freedom for the Negros. King uses a passionate and poetic tone throughout his
speech to make his speech more influential and powerful. The repetition of strong words “let
freedom ring” (6) and “we cannot be satisfied” (3) again and again shows that how passionate he
is about his aim and how badly he wants the audience to stand up for their freedom.
 King had a wide vocabulary. He used the appropriate words that are needed to be used to
give emphasis and emotion to every point that he had said. The conclusion of the speech is also
good. It is made for what it should be. Conclusions are made for a speaker to leave a mark on the
audiences’ minds and hearts, it can be a request or an act that the speaker wants the audience to
internalize and apply. The conclusion of the speech just did that. King told the audience/readers
that freedom should ring in all parts of America: that freedom should be given all.

King makes his speech more effective by using various rhetorical devices because these
devices help promote the key objective of the speech in a more influential and convincing way.
One, on reading his speech, can observe a frequent use of anaphora in his speech. For example,
when he says, “Now is the time…”, he repeats “Now is the time” (2) again and again to put
emphasis on his stance that Negros have had enough of injustice and now, the time has come to
fight for freedom.

The speech is ridden with anaphora: “I have a dream” repeated eight times emphasizing
on the main objective of his speech in an emotive way. He provokes emotions of the audience by
giving freedom the name of his dream. He gives his audience the idea that freedom is like a
dream for them and they have got to get this dream come true at any cost. The use of another
anaphora “We cannot be satisfied” (3) helps King give his audience a strong instinct that they
would not be satisfied unless or until they get whatever they are fighting for. Freedom is what
they need and they would not be satisfied until they are granted the freedom. They would go
beyond boundaries in order to achieve their aim. They would not give up or get satisfied over
anything other than getting freedom. This develops a strong emotional urge in the audience to
fight for their rights.

Metaphors were also employed throughout the speech. Hence, the lines, “the bank of
justice is bankrupt” offered the image of justice being held in a bank and being disbursed to
white people but was hidden from the Negroes. Other examples to effective metaphors can be
seen when King stated “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our
nation” and “lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood”. All these comparisons gave an emotional life into the abstract concept so the
audience would feel the concepts instead of just think them.
 King makes his speech more effective and gives it a proper structure by using three
modes of persuasive appeals. One of them is pathos which is an effective mode of directly
utilizing human emotions. King makes an influential use of pathos when he describes the Negros
as being “crippled” by the “manacles of segregation” and “chains of discrimination”. Through
this, he makes the audience feel that the Blacks are in a state of great despair and catastrophe.
They are being given the punishment for hollow reasons. King constantly tries to create the
feeling of sympathy in the audience for the Negros to make the Whites realize that the Negros
are the unfortunate victims of racism in America. He tries to create the feeling of hatred for
racism in the hearts of the Whites so that they may become friends with the Negros and stand
with them for their rights. King gives an emotional appeal to the audience when he compares the
situation of the Negroes as to being stranded on a “lonely island of poverty” while the Whites
around them are indulging in an “ocean of material prosperity.” This makes the Whites realize
that it is not the Negros who are dumb but it is the society of America which is not letting the
Negroes stand up.

The content of King’s speech is good and well structured. The sentences were run quite
well and all messages can be easily understood. King made sure to use the appropriate words to
convey the concept of every point that he is telling. He also made use of various figures of
speech. King employs influential rhetoric with the aim to engage his audience with him. He
makes very effective use of different components of literature. Use of rhetorical devices like
metaphors and personification enables the audience to stay attentive until the end of the speech.
King repeatedly makes use of anaphora to emphasize his dream and make the audience
memorize his ideas of freedom in a significant way. His excellent use of vocal skills appeals to
the basic ethics and moral values and provoke strong emotions. The whole speech is well-
ordered and well-structured. Firstly, he makes his claim, then indulges his audience into his
speech and then, proposes his own proposal in the form of his dream. He uses a very zealous and
poetic tone. He clears his speech from all sorts of racial discrimination by claiming that the white
people are also a part of his audience. He completely wins the hearts of his audience and
succeeds in convincing the audience to his idea of getting freedom envisioned by his dream.

Domenick E. Sadama