MLK in His 1963 Letter

MLK In his 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King represents the African-American community as a whole when he writes his fellow clergymen and indeed all Americans. Starting off and finishing the letter in the first person singular, Dr. King proceeds to switch to the first person plural for much of the meat of the letter. This change in point-of-view adds power to the piece, signaling solidarity and racial pride. The tone of Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail is at once confident, defiant, and at times arrogant.

His lyrical prose stands on its own as testimony to the speaker's ethos, but the emotional power of King's writing depends largely on the writer's ability to harmonize anger with hope. One of the main ways Martin Luther King, Jr. blends anger with hope is by writing with a clear note of confidence. King oozes confidence from the opening paragraph of his Letter, when he states, "Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas.

If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work," (para. 1). Here, King makes sure to mention that he has secretaries. He places himself in a position of power and thus does not allow his white audience to look down on him as a petty criminal rotting away in an Alabama jail.

Similarly, King concludes the Letter from Birmingham Jail by stating simply: "If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me," (para. 48). By saying this, King subtly underscores the defiant tone of the essay. King's defiance and anger is often expressed as sarcasm in the Letter.

Sarcasm enhances the tone of the letter without detracting from the underlying hopefulness. Towards the end of the letter, the author states, "I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk," (para. 47). The use of sarcasm allows King to retain his sense of confidence rather than to seem conciliatory to those who have thrwarted civil rights.

Earlier on, King also uses sarcasm to enhance the confident tone of his writing. "I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes." (para 4). To achieve a balanced tone in the letter, King blends anger regarding discrimination with the hope of liberation. Doing so, King frames civil rights as a necessary part of achieving the social order and the goals of the Founding Fathers.

He remains angry while also pointing out that liberation was the ultimate goal of American Independence. King states, "We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights," (para 13). King again points out that the protesters are "standing up for what is best in the American dream...thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their.