Martin
Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech," delivered on the National Mall on August 28,
1963one of the most (if not the most) powerful statements on the urgency of
equality and civil rights for Black Americansis in part a product of King's background as a
Baptist minister, in which powerfuland figurative language (such as ) plays a role in every
sermon. The speech is grounded in the sermon tradition, with its rich texture of , , allusion,
and passion.
King begins his allusive pattern in the second paragraph of the
speech:
Five score years ago a great American in whose
symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
With his use of five score years ago, King is
alluding to the Gettysburg Address, given by Abraham Lincoln to commemorate the cemetery at
Gettysburg in 1863, a short speech that is often considered the speech that began to make
America whole again during the Civil War, even though the war had two more years to run. The
power of the allusion rests with its connection to Lincoln, esteemed by most of his listeners,
and its link to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which gave Black Americans their freedom
but not their equality. Without the Union victory at Gettysburg, Lincoln would not have had the
support ot issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
In a brilliant extended
metaphor, based on his allusion to a common element of everyday lifea promissory noteKing
creates an image that most of his listeners could easily understand:
In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check....It
is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note [that is, the Declaration of
Independence] insofar as her citizens of color are concerned....a check which has come back
"insufficient funds."
This allusion to a
commonplace economic transactiona promissory note and its paymentserves to objectify the
abstraction of inequality, and there are few people listening or reading the speech who have not
had a check come back from a bank marked "NSF" (insufficient funds).
In the "I have a dream" section of the speech, King uses the powerful image
of bells (freedom) ringing, another appeal to the senses, when he says:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let Freedom ring
from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
These geographical
allusions are not simply to places his audience may be familiar withthey are locations in which
vestiges of the Confederacy still exist. The main feature of Stone Mountain Park is the
Confederate Memorial Carving, which depicts the images of General Stonewall Jackson, one of the
Confederacy's most effective generals; Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army of Virginia, the
main army in the eastern theater of war; and Jefferson Davis, President of the
Confederacy.
No listener or reader would have missed the import King's call
for freedom to ring from this place. When King mentions Lookout Mountain, he alludes to an area
of horrendous battles during the Civil War in which thousands on both sides were killed and
wounded. There are few more powerful allusions that would have recalled to the minds of his
listeners the horrors of the Civil War.
Throughout the speech, King's
allusions serve to create concrete images that allow abstractions to become visceral; rather
than referring to the Civil War, for example, King alludes to places, very familiar to his
audience, that bring the horrors of the Civil War to life. Objectifying abstractions with
figurative language helps make those abstractions no longer abstract.
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