Rhetorical Engine

I would’ve run this yesterday, but the guy who wrote it didn’t get back to me about it until today. So, here’s a post-MLK Day rhetorical analysis by John Castro (John went completely nuts a few years ago when some internet company tried using the speech in a commercial about how well they distributed broadband):

Friends,

I was listening to MLKs “I have a dream” speech today. Something struck me about it.

There are a few phrases he uses in concentrated bursts — I’m sure there’s a rhetorical term associated with it, but I’m too lazy to look it up (a cup of coffee, on me, for anyone who knows the name of this rhetorical device). Here’s one example:

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Of course, “I have a dream” itself is the most famous example.

If you take these phrases out, and line them up, they make a kind of poem that is the spine of the whole speech:

One hundred years later
Now is the time
We cannot be satisfied
I have a dream
With this faith
Let freedom ring
Free at last

Now, rhetorically, when he’s speaking, he does something interesting with these phrases. These phrases are the first half of a sentence, for instance:

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.”

But the interesting thing about this is that gradually, over the course of a paragraph, he starts taking the natural pauses that you would take at the end of a sentence in the middle of the sentence, between the introductory phrase and the end.

So he actually reads the passage like this:

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.” [pause]

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream [pause]

that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream [pause]

that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

The effect is a wonderful reversal, where an innocuous phrase that kicks off a paragraph (“I have a dream”) becomes the final rhetorical focus of the whole passage. This transformation elevates what are really very simple, very plain phrases — and by that I mean no disrespect – into flourishes of great rhetorical power. These transformations — punctuating the speech with increasing frequency — elevate the text that follows each of them to a new level of intensity. They provide not just the spine and structure of the speech, but the rhetorical engine of the speech as well — constantly shifting it into higher gears. Until the famous climax of the last repeated phrase — “Free at last” — is followed, as we all know, by nothing less than the fanfare of the last forty years.

It’s a remarkable piece of work. Just some thoughts I wanted to share with you all – happy MLK day!

John

PS – Are you like me? Do you geek out about, and bore your people with stuff like this? If so, I’m sorry. But check out “Lincoln at Gettysburg“. Really cool book that will meet your fix.