Personal Writing 2

Contemplating Martin

By: Morgan Theiler

            Martin Luther King Jr. will go down in American     history as a man who had a dream. He fought oppression and inequality with peace and not violence. He was able to point out the wrong doings of our great country with eloquence and grace.

            One of the greatest qualities of his speech was how he painted a very real and sad picture of what was happening to black men all over the nation. He used words such as manacles, quicksand, chains and whirlwind when he describes what the black population has been subjected to. And even after all of this he asks his followers to remain steadfast and serene in their quest for equality. “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plain of dignity and discipline.” With this sentence alone he uses something small like a cup to describe bitterness and hatred and then changes to a huge beautiful image of a plain when describing dignity and discipline. He shows us through imagery how vastly different these emotions and tactics can be. 

            When Martin Luther King talks about the different areas each person will return home to his uses words to describe the oppression that also descried where they are. “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.” He uses the word sweltering knowing that it describes something as simple as the weather and turned it into something that describes the inequities of the times. When he uses the word oasis it hydrates the reader or listener to go out and change what they can change, to find the oasis and satisfy their needs.

            The most beautiful thing about this speech is how he not only talks about the black population but the Jews, the gentiles, Protestants and Catholics to all come together as one and not be separated by differences internally as well as externally.