Unifying Factors in Letter From A Birmingham Jail, Declaration of Independence, and Allegory of the Cave

¶ … historyguide.org/intellect/Allegory.html 2. And Plato, King, Jefferson There appears to be two unifying factors between Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From A Birmingham Jail," Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which is excerpted from book seven of his seminal work entitled The Republic. The first of these is that each author is expressly writing for a political reason or as a justification for a political stance, including King Jr.

(who many may contend was addressing civil rights, which was certainly a heated political issue of his day). The second is that each of the aforementioned authors also justifies a good deal of the rhetoric professed within these bodies of work by the assertion of the authority of God or of a divine power. When the prudent scholar pauses to consider these commonalities between these texts, the argumentative styles invoked do not appear to be all that different.

Rhetorically, however, Plato's Allegory of the Cave distinguishes itself from the other two pieces of literature due to the allegorical, if not outright metaphorical, nature of the relation of a cave, underground, in perpetual darkness, being likened to man's state of existence without the enlightenment of God. The description is quite graphic, his point of the need for true apprehension (which he believes stems from God) is certainly well taken.

The philosophy espoused in this passage is quite captivating, frankly, but loses a good deal of its interest, if not its conviction, when the author likens his philosophy to the practical concerns of man and politics, by explaining the limitations of the State and those individuals who are responsible for it. The author who is most identifiable to me would have to be Martin Luther King Jr., as he is able to aid his conviction in a number of manners that appears to outdo that of the other two authors.

For one, the circumstances of his epistle, which was composed in jail for leading a non-violent protest, lends a degree of urgency and potency to both his words and his overall message of civil equality and mistreatment of African-Americans. Secondly, he is able to support his arguments in a number of contexts that must have resounded with his intended audience, which was largely composed of fellow clergymen who were in no small part responsible for his jailing.

This fact is punctuated quite nicely when King explains his presence in Birmingham by likening it, and his work there, to a number of historical ecclesiastical figures such as the Apostle Paul (who ventured to the Greco Roman minions to speak of Christ), and other eight-century prophets who went to speak the word of God. For his intended audience, this point would have certainly given them pause to consider the effect of such words.

Additionally, King was also fairly graphic in his written depictions of African-Americans in Birmingham and across the country who were brutalized and physically and mentally traumatized because of their race at the hands of bigots -- many of whom very well could have been embraced by the clergymen he.