Unseen Text: I Have A Dream

Text Type: Speech

Guiding Question: How does the speaker inspire his listener to believe in his dream for America?

Last week would have been the 95th birthday of Reverend Martin Luthor King Jr which, this year, happily coincided with Martin Luthor King Day, always marked on the third Monday of January. As part of our course on rhetoric and persuasion, and as a tribute on this week, we worked with King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to improve skills of analysis and hear those rhetorical techniques put into action by a master of his craft. In 1963, 100 years to the day since President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, this young church pastor climbed the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to describe his vision of America. More than 200,000 people – black and white – came to listen. While it’s highly unlikely you’ll get such a well-known and instantly recognisable speech as this in your Paper 1 exam, that doesn’t stop you practicing with familiar passages. So this is what we did – and you can read the outcome of our discussions here, written up as if it were a Paper 1 textual analysis. When reading any of the responses on this blog, please remember that each is only one way of writing about the given text; alternative responses can be equally valid:

‘Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

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’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty,- we are free at last.”’

Speech delivered by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Aug 28^th 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, USA. This version is abridged.

Sample Response

This extract is from the speech Martin Luthor King gave to an assembled crowd of civil rights supporters on the hundred-year anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation that officially abolished slavery in the United States. King develops the premise that while the institution of slavery is no more, the conditions of slavery (in terms of social justice, inequality, and racism) still exist in America and, as a result, Black citizens remain disenfranchised. His speech is designed to offer an alternative vision of America, his famous ‘dream’, in which social divisions are healed and all American people – regardless of the colour of their skin – enjoy the freedoms and liberty promised by the constitution of the United States.

Martin Luther King uses ethos not only to establish a connection with his listeners, but as an integral part of his inspirational message. In King’s case, the colour of his skin, his position as a ‘church pastor’ and his invitation to speak all serve to establish his credibility for his audience, many of whom were black and had come to hear his oratory. He builds on this ‘natural’ authority by aligning himself with the most famous American president: Abraham Lincoln. Describing Lincoln as ‘a great American’, King purposefully patterns the opening words of his speech (‘Five score years ago…’) to echo the words of Lincoln’s speech (‘Four score and seven years ago…’). This intentional allusion implies Martin Luther King is continuing the quest for emancipation, work he believes is not yet done. The line ‘in whose shadow we stand today’ is meant to be literal as well as symbolic: King was standing in front of a statue of Lincoln, so the association has a visual element as well. He renders Lincoln’s achievements using strong visual imagery: slavery is imagined as a state of darkness whereas the Emancipation Proclamation is a source of light. The pattern of imagery progresses from dark (‘shadow, long night, darkness’) to light: ‘a great beacon light of hope.’ In a figurative sense, King presents himself as the next in a line of torchbearers, as if the ‘beacon light’ has been passed from Lincoln to him, from the past to the present – and he will guide us into the future as well. Therefore, by using inspirational imagery and aligning himself with figures who will appeal to black and white listeners both, King ensures he connects with a wider audience in an inspirational way.

Furthermore, King uses assertive language to state his core argument in a way that the audience will feel is a persuasive truth: despite the abolition of slavery, ‘the Negro still is not free.’ This sentence is stated as a powerful assertion that King will go on to illustrate using vivid images and metaphors. The words ‘manacles’ and ‘chains’ utilise the dark language of slavery to imply the sad truth that, while no longer slaves, Black citizens are often treated as such. These emotive words would certainly resonate with people in the crowd whose near-ancestors had lived the experience of slavery in the US. The idea of ‘segregation’ is developed in a second metaphor, whereby the country is imagined as an ‘ocean of prosperity’ but black citizens are confined to an ‘island of poverty’. Here antithesis is used to exclude black citizens from riches that white citizens enjoy. Throughout this paragraph, King repeats ‘One hundred years later…’; anaphora emphasises the passage of time to convey the scandal that people of colour have been disenfranchised so long after the promise of freedom was made. Overall, the combination of assertion with rhetorical features allows King to persuade his listeners that black experience is still defined by the echoes of slavery even after much time has passed since emancipation.

King uses simple and direct metaphors, combined with a ‘plain folks’ appeal, to create hope out of despair. Firstly, he develops an extended metaphor comparing the US Constitution to a ‘promissory note’ that turns out to be a ‘bad check.’ The use of banking as a comparison is likely to be familiar to many of his listeners who struggle to make it day to day, and being let down by powerful institutions like the bank may hit a nerve. To emphasise this metaphor, King employs a type of repetition called anadiplosis, whereby the last word of one phrase is repeated as the first word of the next: ‘a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.’ Not only is this line humorous, but the idea of the nation’s ‘bank of justice’ being out of money touches on issues such as wealth inequality and poverty that many of his listeners would be familiar with. However, using the connective ‘but’ King returns to his positive, hopeful message: ‘we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt’. This is the first moment he uses the word ‘we’, to express solidarity with the situations of his listeners. In this way, he combines a relatable metaphor with a plain folks appeal so that his message of finding hope out of despair is even more convincing.

The emotional heart of King’s speech is located in the sequence of short paragraphs in which he describes his vision of healing and unity. He imagines the ‘sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners’ sitting down at ‘a table of brotherhood’. The table is a metaphor for ‘equality’, symbolizing a place where everybody sits together regardless of skin colour; the parallelism of ‘sons of former slaves’ alongside ‘sons of former slave owners’ allows both victims and perpetrators of historical injustice the same position at the table. King, like Mandela, espouses a philosophy of reconciliation; he’s not seeking revenge but equality for all, free from historical blame. King embellishes his imagery with auditory devices such as alliteration when he speaks about his children being ‘judged not by the colour of their skin but the content of their character.’ In this line, four strong C/K sounds stress his words emphatically and inspirationally.  Each image in this sequence is prefaced by the famous anaphora: ‘I have a dream…’ , a repetition that maximises the emotional appeal.

Ultimately, King’s speech transforms despair and unattainable dreams into the positivity of hope and faith:‘This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with.’ The effect of this transformation is to make his ideas seem more certain and provide a higher degree of probability to his listeners. A ‘dream’ is intangible – but ‘hope’ is more solid, and ‘faith’ more certain still. King combines modality (‘will’) with repetition to convey his certainty that one day his vision will become reality: ‘we will be able to hew… we will be able to transform… we will be able to work together.’ Again, anaphora builds emphasis and emotion, culminating in the line: ‘we will be free one day.’ This moment is a direct contrast of his opening premise (‘the Negro is still not free’) and presents an alternative reality that he is certain will come to pass. At the very end, he reiterates his vision of equality by taking opposite kinds of people and linking them together using the word ‘and’: ‘Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics’. It’s a compelling call for national unity and one that, thanks to King’s mastery of emotional rhetoric and repetition, is easy to be inspired by.