Literary devices play a crucial role in the public speeches of political leaders. In addition to the fact that the metaphor makes speech more expressive, it allows to explain complex political phenomena through more familiar realities to the addressee. Moreover, metaphor is the most effective tool for manipulating public consciousness and forming a specific emotional state in the audience. One example of an influential political speech is King’s I Have a Dream, which includes many metaphors. This speech by Martin Luther King is effective because it gives the political text the most expressiveness, prompts the necessary emotional reaction from the listeners, and masks the unpleasant facts of reality, conveying them in a more noble form.
In Martin Luther King’s speech, metaphors have remarkable expressiveness. They are understandable to most people since they are based on familiar images. The primary audience of King was ordinary people, people who knew what real suffering was, and Martin Luther King managed to create precisely such metaphors that were close to them. The metaphors of “storms of persecutions” and “the winds of police brutality” emphasize even more that the Negroes had to suffer a lot (King, 2016, p. 42). The political leader there by himself shows that he is aware of their suffering, which means that he is ready to help and lead them. These literary devices also help King to show his complicity and empathy—he calls citizens of color “veterans of creative suffering” (King, 2016, p. 42). This is a vivid metaphor, which is one of the most expressive in the political speech of King.
King’s speech is effective because the extended metaphor used at the climax of a political speech spurs people to action. King (2016) says that “every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plains” (p. 43). He strives to convey to people that nothing is impossible, that valleys can turn into lakes, mountains into plains, and winding paths can become straight. These metaphors are particularly effective because they are aimed at convincing people of the unfair treatment of them by the state and the opportunity to fight for their rights. To convey his deepest dreams to people’s hearts, Martin Luther King used the following metaphor: “the state of Mississippi, …, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice” (King, 2016, p. 43). King uses this metaphor to make a clear connection between freedom, justice, and a fertile oasis.
King uses effective metaphors to mask the unpleasant facts of reality and convey them in a more noble form. The author calls the Emancipation Proclamation (“decree”) “a great beacon light of hope,” referring to the image of a lighthouse that helps sailors and gives them hope in difficult times (King, 2016, p. 40). King (2016) says, “negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice” (p. 40). He implies that the injustice that black people suffered for a long time was the source of the nightmares of their lives and incinerated them. Moreover, King (2016) says that “the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty amid a vast ocean of material prosperity” (p. 41). The metaphors presented in this example are based on the image of a lonely island where black people live, suffering from slavery and poverty, surrounded by a vast ocean, which is the image of all white people enjoying prosperity and free life. King reasons that the suffering of black people is only a tiny piece of land in the ocean.
Thus, Martin Luther King created a great political speech that ignited the hearts of many people who had already lost faith in freedom and justice. King’s speech is effective because it uses expressive and vivid metaphors that are not complex in meaning and understandable to everyone, which is essential for a political speech designed for a large audience. Moreover, the emphasis on inciting an emotional reaction from the audience and the transformation of unpleasant facts of reality into a nobler form also makes this speech effective.
Reference
King, M. L. (2016). I have a dream. In J. R. McCuen-Methererll & A. C. Winler (Eds.), Reading for writers (15th ed., pp. 40-44.). Cengage Learning.