Directions: martin luther king, jr.’s “letter from birmingham jail” includes many examples of figurative language meant to persuade people to take action. read the lines from the letter and identify one type of figurative language (some excerpts may contain more than one), its meaning, its effect on mood and tone, and its effect on audience. an example has been completed for you. then, answer the analysis question.
example:
this movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination.
• type of figurative language: personification
• meaning of figurative language: it means the movement grows because its fed by people’s frustration with racial discrimination
• effect on tone and mood: it creates a factual tone and an urgent mood.
• effect on audience: audience will see the civil rights movement as a living thing, which would make it more meaningful.
1. … when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky…
• type of figurative language: metaphor
• meaning of figurative language: he is comparing her mind to clouds in the sky.
• effect on tone and mood: it creates a serious and sympathetic tone.
• effect on audience: audience gets a view of the impact of the prejudice and racism that took place against african americans.
2. like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
• type of figurative language: simile
• meaning of figurative language: it used to make readers to imagine the boil and understand author's meaning more clearly.
• effect on tone and mood: concerning and serious tone.
• effect on audience: audience sees the analogy and the lack of justice in the justice system.
3. over and over again i have found myself asking: "who worships here? who is their god? where were their voices when the lips of governor barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? where were their voices of support when tired, bruised, and weary negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest? "
• type of figurative language:
• meaning of figurative language:
• effect on tone and mood:
• effect on audience:
4. in those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.
• type of figurative language: metaphor
• meaning of figurative language:
• effect on tone and mood:
• effect on audience:
5. it was "illegal" to aid and comfort a jew in hitler's germany. but i am sure that, if i had lived in germany during that time, i would have aided and comforted my jewish brothers even though it was illegal.
• type of figurative language:
• meaning of figurative language:
• effect on tone and mood:
• effect on audience:
analysis question: how does dr. king use figurative language to support his feelings about equal civil rights for african-americans? dr. king used figurative language to understand and support his feelings about the civil rights.