I Have a Dream: Analysis

I Have a Dream: Analysis

Symbols, Motifs, and Rhetorical Devices

Rhetoric

Pathos The 1963 march on Washington was the biggest rally of the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew he couldn't accomplish his goals without getting everybody possible involved—A...

Structure

Impromptu Sermon This speech goes from planned-out to off the top awesome.Martin Luther King, Jr. and his team of speechwriters went through several drafts of the original text. In fact, it wasn't...

Tone

Religious Optimism A reverend's job is to make you believe. Unlike The X-Files: I Want to Believe, religious leaders tend to do this with faith and optimism. MLK's speech doesn't say that things ar...

What's Up With the Title?

"I Have a Dream" was largely improvised, but King and his team of writers had toyed with similar themes in other speeches—the early drafts of the big kahuna. In 1961 and 1962. King gave several s...

What's Up With the Opening Lines?

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic sh...

What's Up With the Closing Lines?

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God...

Tough-o-Meter

(2) Base CampMartin Luther King wasn't playing around when he delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. He wasn't playing around when it came to packing a punch with his amazing thoughts, and he wasn'...

Shout-Outs

In-Text ReferencesHistorical and Political ReferencesEmancipation Proclamation (2.1)Constitution (4.2)Declaration of Independence (4.2, 12.1)Governor George Wallace (16.1)Pop Culture ReferencesMy C...

Trivia

Marlon Brando was in attendance at the March on Washington. He might not have been a contender in On The Waterfront, but he was certainly a contender in the Civil Rights Movement. Bob Dylan was als...