The “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written by Martin Luther King Jr., is written for the purpose of motivating the African-American community to stand up for their rights and seeking sympathy for their position in society. King displays skillful organization of information to slowly build the audience’s interest before revealing the specific purpose of writing the letter. The types of appeals used in the letter’s composition indicate that King had carefully distributed them across the entire structure of the letter.
However, King’s letter contains several sections where spoken words would have achieved a better effect than written words. For example, in the 11th paragraph, King uses a sentence with over 300 words to describe the oppression of the African-American population. In that part of the letter, King attempts to provoke an emotional response from the audience and encourage African-Americans to stand up and demand their rights. However, such examples where King wants to build a certain amount of tension in the audience to stimulate their need for a change in the society have more spoken than written qualities.
The structure in the letter is organized in the manner to narrow the topic during the first five paragraphs. King identifies his audience, gives the background behind his arrest, and proceeds to identify injustice and its threat to the social structure. Finally, King explains that the white power structure did not leave the African-American community with and explains the purpose of his letter in the fifth paragraph. The initial paragraphs are designed to give the audience a broad view of the cause for writing the letter and narrow it to King’s desired topic of discussion later in the letter.
King uses mainly emotional appeal to persuade his audience in his beliefs and viewpoints. However, besides using pathos, King uses logos to explain the logic behind his reasoning that some laws are unjust and should be broken. Pathos is used only occasionally to support or illustrate King’s perspective. Occasionally, King provides arguments from his opposition and proceeds to contrast them with his reasoning to convince the audience that his reasoning against those statements is just. Other than seeking appeal from the audience, King seeks sympathy towards the African-Americans by describing the quality of their lifestyle as intolerable. The purpose of his letter is achieved through a skillful composition of the letter because King uses repetition to present his basic ideas and arguments to build up emotional responses in the readers. Despite the repetitive composition of the letter, the writing is coherent, the arguments are clear, and the information is well-organized.
Naturally, if laws are dismissed as immoral, King’s reasoning would become invalid because the justification of his ideas rests on the premise that laws which are unjust can be broken. At some points, King even address religious laws and claims that all people deserve love, respect, and justice equally, but when he addresses human laws, he considers them divided between just and unjust laws. However, even if all laws were to be considered moral and just, his concepts and beliefs might remain valid. King could have dismissed his premise that laws which are unjust can be violated, but he could have still supported his reasoning using different arguments. The reasoning would have remained the same, only the method for justifying it would have changed.
