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Allusion in Letter from Birmingham Jail

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Martin Luther King, Jr. is widely acknowledged as the leader of the movement for a peaceful solution to the issue of equality of all races. He is celebrated as a hero for not only the fairness he created, but for his clear, coherent speech of dreams and hopes shared by many people throughout the time that he lived. In 1963, King was imprisoned in Birmingham jail for participating in nonviolent demonstrations. During this time, he composed his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The letter reveals the injustice in Birmingham and across the nation, and attacks both segregation and the silence behind it. King came to Birmingham to help his fellow African-Americans achieve equality, and he does not believe he is an outsider. King’s strength as a rhetorician and passion for equality is shown, using strategies such as antithesis, catalog, and allusion to craft his argument in the letter. In the beginning of the letter, King argues that there truly is no such thing as an outsider because all people are interrelated. He uses antithesis to develop this idea. King claims, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The opposition of “injustice anywhere” and “justice everywhere” in this sentence emphasizes the fact that each of these concepts coexist in this time and place. King expands on this with another use of antithesis, stating that “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Here, he again uses the opposition of words “directly” and “indirectly” to emphasize how an action affects not only a single individual, but everyone as a whole. King shows that people often share the same fate, which has shaped the actions of any individual. King then offers the thought that “Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” The antithetical comparison of “inside” and “outsider” here shows how the two ideas are both shared in the con

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