“I Have a Dream”
Martin Luther King Jr. The speech given by Martin Luther King Jr.,/ King, Jr., ”I Have a Dream,”on August 28, 1963 (comma) at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. (comma) marked a new era in America’s civil rights movement. Born in the South, on January 15, 1929 (P) in Atlanta, Georgia, during times where blacks lacked of any citizenship rights. Through his activism, he played an important role in ending the segregation of African-Americans. He also created the Civil RIghts Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights in 1965. Martin Luther King, Jr., received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 for his outstanding works. King, assassinated on April 4, 1968 P at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, left a legacy for many Americans to follow. “ I Had/Have a Dream.”, (no comma) symbolizes King’s vision of equality and freedom for all, no matter your creed or race. In this speech no meter or rhyme scheme composed in it. (This sentence does not make sense.) The onomatopoeia phrased by the word ring in line 20 of King’s speech highlights the word freedom. Alliteration used in line 4 of “...lives on a lonely island...” (King 4) all repeat the “l” sound at the beginning of each word. Consonance shown in line 4 with “...lonely island...” (King 4) show repetition with the “n” sound in the middle of each word. Assonance represented in “...vast ocean of material...” (King 4) demonstrates the vowel sound, a, in the middle of the words. King’s speech sounds cacophonous through the choices of his words, such as, lonely, dark, desolate and segregation. “Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado” (King 21) and “Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California” (King 22) both show parallelism by their grammatical structure. One can find repetition with the words “Again and again...” (King 8). Refrain can be found with “I have a dream” (King 15 & 17) because of the sole repetition of the phrase. “I have a dream that one day...” (King 11, 16 & 18) shows incremental repetition because of the partial phrase being repeated. “...little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers” (King 16) both represents sight and touch imagery because you can see black children joining with the white children and you can feel each others hands lock together as one. Emotional imagery can be shown throughout the entire speech P but the line that showed a lot of emotion “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” (King 11). King speaks of his dream that this nation will rise to become an equal nation. This metaphor “...the flames of withering injustice.” (King 2) explains that the flames of injustice may get bigger and dangerous yet at one point it/they can be extinguish just as King wants to happen. “ This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope.” (King 2) a simile that compares this movement to a light of hope for the black