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I Have a Dream: The Speech as Literature
By Rick Rofman
Although the Reverend Martin Luther
King’s speech “I Have a Dream” was born
out of the civil rights movement its
inspiration was literature. Teachers of
literature and rhetoric might want to
reexamine King’s speech now that January
15, Dr. King’s birthday, has been declared
a holiday. “I Have a Dream” is full of
literary devices, such as metaphors,
repetition, and contrasts of opposite ideas
and images. Like Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address and Kennedy’s Inaugural Address,
Martin Luther King’s famous speech,
which took place one hundred years after
the Emancipation Proclamation, is an ideal
way to introduce students to some of the
concepts of literature and poetic diction
while using a nonfiction prose model.
The basic idea of King’s speech is that
while the Emancipation Proclamation
giving the Negro freedom was signed by
Lincoln in 1863, one hundred years later
(King’s speech was delivered in August
1963) the Negro still is not free. King
deplores this situation and gives and
impassioned plea for change. That is all
there is to the speech. And yet the
document is twenty-seven paragraphs
long! The reason the speech is so long is
that it is a magnificent example of style.
What is important is not so much what
King says as how he says it.
The metaphors and other literary
devices are in virtually every paragraph.
Even the very first paragraph is rich in
poetic technique. The speech begins with
a variation of Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address, as King says, “Five score years
ago, a great American, in whose symbolic
shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation
Proclamation.” The great American is, of
course, Abraham Lincoln. We know this
not only because Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation but because
the speech is being given literally in the
shadow of the Lincoln memorial during the
March on Washington in 1963. So King
chose to give his speech some of the
dignity of Lincoln’s by starting with the
phrase “five score years ago,” a variation
on Lincoln’s “four score and seven.” But
King does more than merely mimic Lincoln.
He goes on to create a simile, referring to
this momentous decree of Lincoln’s as a
“great beacon light of hope.” He then
intensifies the horror of slavery by talking
of Negro slaves “who has been seared in
the flames of withering injustice.” Finally,
he builds on the image of a beacon light by
comparing it with “joyous daybreak” that
ended the “long night of captivity.” The
words daybreak and long night are
opposite ideas, and the word joyous
contrasts with the horror of captivity. The
poetry in the first paragraph of King’s
speech is almost as intricate as one of
Alexander Pope’s heroic couplets. I have
often spent upwards of five minutes of
class time on just these first five lines of “I
Have a Dream.”
The second paragraph continues the
use of metaphors. King tells that “the life
of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the
manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination” and that one hundred
years later the Negro lives on a “lonely
island of poverty” in the midst of a “vast
ocean of material prosperity.” But the
second paragraph also introduces the
device of repetition, a device that King uses
many times in his address. King uses the
phrase “one hundred years later” four
times, and King is to use repetition
throughout his speech, not only in the
famous cadence “I have a dream that one
day…”, but also in phrases such as “Now is
the time” and “Let freedom ring.”
The next portion of the poetic speech
presents an “extended metaphor,” a
comparison that is carried through all of
one paragraph and half of another. King
says, “In a sense we have come to our
Nation’s Capital to cash a check,” and then
follows this with several sentences that
utilize the vocabulary of money, currency,
and banking. In class, I generally read the
passage aloud emphasizing with my voice
the phrases that I feel the students should
underline. These include such phrases as
“promissory note,” “every American was to
fall heir,” “honoring this sacred obligation,”
“given to Negro people a bad check,”
“insufficient funds,” “bank of justice
bankrupt, “great vaults of opportunity,”
“given us upon demand,” “the riches of
freedom,” and “the security of justice.”
The point is that King uses an extended
metaphor based on money images to
dramatize the idea that America has failed
her citizens of color. Students who might
be unimpressed by King’s use of samples
of figurative language up to now cannot fail
to be impressed by this continuing effort at
presenting an idea through unified
imagery.
And King points out the “fierce
urgency of now” as he tells his listeners
that this is no time to engage in the luxury
of cooling off or take the “tranquilizing
drug of gradualism.” In another piece of
his magnificent “Letter from Birmingham
Jail,” King tells his audience at length why
the Negro can no longer wait, but here he
simply uses the marvelous phrase
“tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” In
stressing the “fierce urgency of now” King
uses the phrase “Now is the time” four
times in succession, just as he did with
“one hundred years later” earlier in his
speech. Again, however, King uses
multiple poetic devices. In addition to his
repetition of “now,” he uses metaphors
again as he states “Now is the time to rise
from the dark and desolate valley of
segregation to the sunlit path of racial
justice “and “Now is the time to lift our
nation from the quick sands of racial
injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.”
As before, his metaphors feature
contrasting images. The “sunlit path of
racial justice” and the “quicksands of racial
injustice” are placed against “the solid rock
of brotherhood.” Not only do these ideas
contrast, but there is also a rising action to
the imagery, as we rise from the dark
valley to the sunlit path and as we lift our
nation from the quicksands to the solid
rock.
The next paragraph is equally rich in
figurative language and contrasting
imagery. King warns that “this sweltering
summer of the Negro’s legitimate
discontent will not pass until there is an
invigorating autumn of freedom and
equality.” The reference to the summer of
discontent is a parody on the
Shakespearean phrase “winter of
discontent,” which was also the title of a
then current John Steinbeck novel. The
“sweltering” summer is sweltering both in
terms of being intensely hot and humid
and in terms of the dynamism of the Negro
movement for civil rights. Likewise, the
“invigorating autumn” is both time of relief
from the heat of summer and a chance for
a new beginning for the Negro. As King
says un the next sentence “1963 is not an
end but and beginning.” Then King
becomes intensely serious as he leaves his
metaphors for the moment and says in
perfectly straightforward language, “Those
who hope that the Negro needed to blow off
steam and will now be content will have a
rude awakening if the nation returns to
business as usual. There will be neither
rest nor tranquility in America until the
Negro is granted his citizenship rights.”
But he soon returns to figurative language
as he warns that the “whirlwinds of revolt
will continue to shake the foundation of
our nation until the bright day of justice
emerges.”
In the next section King introduces
the idea of nonviolent protest as he
entreats, “Let us not seek to satisfy our
thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup
of bitterness and hatred.” But as he is
cautious that Negros should not allow their
“creative protest to degenerate into
physical violence,” he uses another
interesting metaphoric technique, one that
he has used before in this speech though
we have not noted it up to now. There are
many metaphors based on the imagery of
water in “I Have a Dream.” It is almost as
if water represents the purity and the
goodness of the Negro cause. In this
section there is a reference to “our thirst
for freedom,” but water has been
prominent throughout the speech. The
mention of the “great beacon light of hope”
in the first paragraph signifies water
because a beacon light is seen while at sea
but approaching land. Similarly, the
reference to the Negro living “on a lonely
island of poverty in the midst of a vast
ocean of prosperity” calls to mind than
image of water. It may be stretching the
point, but the movement from the
“quicksand of racial injustice to the solid
rock of brotherhood” is akin to going from
wet land to dry land. Farther along in the
article, when King tells of conditions under
which “we can never be satisfied,” he
includes “until justice rolls down like
waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream.” There is another reference to
reference to water later on in the speech
when King says that he as a dream that
“one day even the state of Mississippi, a
desert state sweltering with the heat of
injustice and oppression will be
transformed into an oasis of freedom and
justice.” Finally, there is the reference to
the governor of Alabama, whose “lips are
presently dripping with the words of
interposition and nullification.” These
references to water or symbols of water are
just as noteworthy as the many
contrasting images and references to rising
action.
The section of the speech where King
tells why the Negro can never be satisfied
until certain fundamental changes are
made is not stated in metaphoric term, but
rather in very straightforward language,
but is quite effective. Again, the reader is
referred to King’s “Letter from Birmingham
Jail” for a more complete discussion of the
wrongs that been perpetrated on the Negro,
but the reasons given here are quite strong
nonetheless.
But King soon returns to his
rhythmic cadence and poetic diction as he
urges “Go back to Mississippi, go back to
Alabama, go back…go back to the slums
and ghettos of our modern cities knowing
that somehow this situation can and will
be changed.” He concludes this section by
making an oblique reference to rising
action, as he entreats, “Let us not wallow
in the valley of despair.”
The section that follows is, of course, the
best known of the entire speech. It is
where King chants, “I have a dream” and
recounts several examples of his dream of
freedom and brother hood and equality for
all. Once again, King uses repetition, as he
introduces each of his dreams with “I have
a dream that one day…” and every so often
punctuates his song with the simple
statement, “I have a dream today.” It is in
this section that we find hope that the
sweltering dessert state of Mississippi will
be transformed into and oasis of freedom
and justice and that the state of Alabama,
“whose governor’s lips are currently
dripping with the interposition and
nullification,” will be transformed into a
situation where, “little black boys and little
black girls will be able to join hands with
little white boys and little white girls and
walk together as sisters and brothers.”
As King moves toward the
conclusion of his speech, he says that with
faith in his dreams “we will be able to
transform the jangling discords of our
nation into a beautiful symphony of
brotherhood.” Again we have metaphors
that contrast, this time in the realm of
music. Having made reference to music,
King then chants the words of “My country
‘tis of thee” and concludes with the phrase
“Let freedom ring.” From this point he
moves into another chant, as he lets
freedom ring from the mountaintops.
Starting each line with the phrase “Let
freedom ring,” he refers, in sequence, to
the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire,
the mighty mountains of New York, the
heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania,
the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado, the
curvaceous peaks of California, Stone
Mountain of Georgia, Lookout Mountain of
Tennessee, from every hill and mole hill in
Mississippi, and from every mountainside.
The series of mountains of the Northeast
and West contrasted with those of the
South is, of course, a poetic technique, and
a very interesting one.
A final poetic technique is the
contrasting of black men and white men,
Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics where King talks of all God’s
children joining hands and singing “Free at
last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we
are free at last!”
While the “I Have a Dream” speech
will always be remembered as the keynote
address of the civil rights movement, it
should not be overlooked as a work of
literature. Every politician, to be sure,
strives for at least one or two rhetorical
devices in his speeches, but Martin Luther
King, Jr. Wrote a speech packed with
literary techniques and rhetorical devices
in his speeches. While the new January
15 holiday may be an excuse to introduce
King’s writings into curriculum, no excuse
is needed. “I Have a Dream” holds its own
as a work of literature.
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Rick Rofman has a B.A. in English, Phi Beta
Kappa, from the University of Pennsylvania,
and a master’s degree in English
Communications from Syracuse University.
He lives in Van Nuys, California and currently
teaches part time in Los Angeles and
Wilmington. Rick is active in the Academy of
Television Arts and Sciences. This article
appeared in the 1984 Nov/Dec issue of
California English.