II. Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau -- find the full text here.
III. Sample close reading of a passage from MLK, based on class notes:
This passage from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” follows and reinforces Martin Luther King’s assertion that the time for waiting is over. As part of his urge to action, King uses rhetorical devices that add emphasis and express the full effects of segregation. He compels his readers, even those who are hostile to the cause of civil rights, to identify and empathize with black Americans suffering from injustice. His language refuses to let the audience remain aloof.
Pathos and urgency are conveyed through anaphora. King repeats introductory phrases such as “when you have seen…,” “when you are…,” and “when you suddenly find…” to introduce specific and, in some cases, deeply personal instances of racial injustice. He presents overt examples, such as the barring of blacks from hotels and abuse by police, and also more subtle forms, such as the sense of inferiority and resentment instilled in black children.
These more insidious effects of racism are communicated through inventive metaphors and images. King refers to “twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight case of poverty” to show one of the less obvious effects of poverty: the way it isolates the poor from the rest of society and stifles the potential of black Americans. He describes how his daughter sees “ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her mental sky,” suggesting her growing internalization of racial prejudice at a young age. He points to the sense of humiliation a person feels “when your first name becomes “nigger;”” here, “name” is a metonym for identity itself. King creates new associations and imparts a deeper understanding of the psychological effects of segregation through these devices.
His most powerful rhetorical move is to force the reader to imagine himself in King’s own shoes. The anaphoras in this passage are directed outward through the use of the pronoun “you,” which sounds less formal than the third person singular “one.” The repetition of “you” pulls the reader into his experiences and creates the illusion of an empathic relationship between King and his audience. Of course, many readers – certainly the white clergymen to whom the letter is nominally addressed – have never faced racism themselves. To close this distance, King’s rhetoric invites them to experience the pain of segregation firsthand. His enumeration of examples builds to a final point: waiting is no longer an option. Segregation must end now.
The final rhetorical device in this passage is climax. King builds to a key idea through the use of anaphora, metaphor, and apostrophe: the worst fate is to be denied the basic right to be oneself. He confronts the reader with the neologism of “nobodiness,” as if he must create a term for a condition so degrading it has not yet been named. By the end of the passage, even the most hostile reader has been disarmed and enlightened.
