One of the most memorable and prolific speeches of the twentieth century was delivered on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in our nation's capital. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of a dream in which the social norms at the time would shed away and life would take the form of the America originally envisioned by its founding fathers. It was this speech that portrayed the struggles of African Americans and the struggles of America as well. Furthermore, "I Have A Dream" expresses the need for the social acceptance and equality for not only African Americans, but also people of all gender, race, and religion.
Nevertheless, in criticizing this speech, the model for criticism must be appropriate; therefore, in choosing a model for this criticism, I decided that metaphoric criticism works best because of the vast views available in its approach. In "I Have A Dream", Dr. King applies many devices to chronicle the advances and treatment of a people. Through these methods, we see an ordering of events constructed to present a view of the world according to not only him, but to millions of American as well. In addition, this perspective of the world is bolstered by events that were definitive to the way of life, prior to its more visible changing in the latter part of the 1960's. However, Dr. King uses many more techniques ultimately leading to the question this criticism will ask: "Which techniques employed by King are intrinsic to the conceptualization of both the likelihood of his dream coming true and to the comprehension of his dream by the American public?"
One of the obvious techniques that King uses is his use of rhetorical devices. Throughout the speech we see a consistent pulse of t ...