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I Have A Dream Speech Figurative Language

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Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech is very influential. It was deliberately written so that he could try to convince the people of America to end segregation. He believed that nothing has been done to stop segregation and he feels the time is now to end it. He used literary devices to explain why segregation needs to be ended now. An example of figurative language from his speech is “I have a dream”. This is an example of anaphora. This is trying to tell the audience about the dream King has for America’s future. He repeats this phrase to impact the audience’s perspective and to sway them to his side of the topic. The African Americans in the crowd can agree with him the most because they have gone through the struggles he is …show more content…

He repeats this phrase so that the audience can understand that King believes that in order to let freedom ring, they have to get rid of the racist emotions out of the people in the most racist states. The people who would agree with him most would be the blacks living in the racist states, while the people who would disagree with this would be the racist people of America. Dr.King also used allusion in his “I have a dream speech”. An example of this would be “My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing”. This is a line from the song “America the Beautiful”. He is trying to inform segregationists that they are not free and they don’t have liberty, and when they do have liberty, the song will have a different meaning. He sings this anthem that all American’s can recognize, and he twists the words of the song and he uses those words to create an emotion of sadness in the audience to show that the life of an African American is bitter. The people who would agree with this the most is the nationalists of America and the African Americans. Another example of Allusion is “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are

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