Ethos, Pathos, Logos in I Have a Dream (Essay Sample)

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Ethos, Pathos, Logos in I Have a Dream
Martin Luther King’s speech ‘I Have a Dream’ captures the necessity for change, for everyone to be treated equally, and the potential for hope in American society. Luther King employed all three tools of persuasion in his speech. He appealed to the emotional ideals of his audience, their ethical bastions, and put forth the case for logic in the undertakings of their struggle for civil liberties and the fight against all forms of oppression. As a result, King's speech is one of the most memorable, inspiring, and uplifting oratories of our times.
Several statements clearly depict the use of Ethos in King’s appeal. In the statement, “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.” (King, 1), Luther King is establishing a connection with the members of his audience not only on the premise of them being his fellow people of color but as a dedicated parent or father looking out for the best for his children, hoping that they will inherit a better world because of their immense contribution to the civil rights movement in the present.
In this case, Martin Luther King took an approach that temporarily disengaged the discussion from being solely about the discriminated population. By appealing to universal parental ideals, King made sure that he brought everyone in his audience into the fold. He brought out parallels between the hopes and desires of a regular parent and the hopes and desires of a deprived minority, both parties seeking to reach a better quality of life. Of course, any parent in the audience, be they Caucasian, Hispanic, African American, Asian or otherwise would connect to these ideals and begin to reach into themselves and interrogate the Negro's position.
In King's speech, he looks back at turnstile moments in American history where he refers to the men who laid the foundation of free America. In the opening statement of his speech, he states, "Five score years ago.”, this is in correspondence to the opening lines of the Gettysburg address, “Four score and seven years ago.” Here he establishes and reminds the audience of the identity of one great American founding father who signed the Emancipation proclamation and set up ethical standards for American society (Washington, 17). In this instance, he adds an ethical appeal to his speech.
As the speech progresses, King says,
“Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree is 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.” (King, 2).
In this case, King is using Pathos to appeal to his audience's emotions. He actively reminds the congregation before him of the immense hope they all carried in their hearts that with the end of slavery, they had a sure-fire path to freedom. He, however gives them a wake-up call, reminding them that it has been one hundred years since, and they still wait for their freedom. He points out a parallel between their expectations and the common person's reality, depicting that they have clearly been short-changed as nothing has really been fixed in a decade.
There is a clear expression of anger in Dr. King's speech as he speaks of the gatekeepers that have kept African Americans from finding their joy, anger that he surely knew was felt by everyone who felt aggrieved by the evils he mentions. The emotional appeal takes a harder stance when King spells out the rights and freedoms denied to the African American, which he terms as a debt to the nation and one that keeps getting bloated over time. (King, 2).
In a sublime turn of events, right as the appeal to the audience's emotions generates heightened emotions, King turns to Logos to channel the raw emotion