I Had A Dream Stylistic Analysis

Pressing Frustration Martin Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” speech expresses the tones of pressing frustration. King demands that the government give the overdue debt of liberty for African Americans. He imagines a future of fellowship between races and is passionately arguing for this equality of all men. King’s diction intensifies his compelling dissatisfaction with the cruel treatment the white American government gives the blacks. The nation is long overdue in “cash(ing) a check” of liberty, so the Negroes act as “whirlwinds of revolt” until America is “transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice” (King). Blacks of America are uprising because of their lack of civil rights in the eye of the American system. All Negroes want is to be treated the same as any white man and to be able to live in peace with the same rights as everyone else. King emphasizes the need to “rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice”, but also expresses that his people must not “drink from the cup of bitterness and hatred” to achieve a seat at “the table of brotherhood.”(King) In order to gain their freedom, blacks must not use violence and animosity to achieve their goals; peaceful efforts will just build the foundations of their equality on hostility. If the Negroes truly want to be able to stand side by side with whites, they must do so on peaceful grounds. King’s diction shows how imperative it is that blacks act quickly and through nonviolence. King’s detail helps illustrate how it is imperative that the blacks be given their right to liberty; otherwise the American dream of equality and achieving happiness cannot be realized. He often has statements like “the Negro is not free” and “The Negro’s discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality” to emphasize the need for the equal rights for colored people (King). The blacks of the time before the Civil Rights Act in the 1960’s were