This is due tomorrow and i am trying to get comments to improve it so please help me. This is an AP lang essay, compare contrast Civil Disobedience to Letter from Birmingham Jail. Not just on rhetorical strategies, but on all of SOAPStone. It will be greatly appreciated if someone could revise, comment, and rate on an AP Scale for my essay. Thank you!
Compare and Contrast: "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and "Civil Disobedience"
Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. both attempt to argue for the rights to disobey authority if there is social injustice. Thoreau analyzes the duty and responsibility of citizens to protest and take action against corrupt laws of the government. Likewise, King conveys to his audience that the laws of the government against blacks are intolerable and that civil disobedience should be used as an instrument of freedom. They both effectively illustrate their philosophy that civil disobedience is a necessity, and the similarities and differences of these two essays are portrayed through their occasion, audience, purpose, speaker, tone, appeals, and rhetorical strategies.
The occasion of a persuasive essay can give the reader an understanding of why the author may be persuading the audience about a certain topic. Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," is written in the United States, during the transcendentalism era, around 1837 to 1840's. His occasion also includes the small amount of time he spent in jail for not paying his taxes. On the other hand, King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is written more than one hundred years later. King writes in Birmingham Alabama during the Civil Rights Era. Similar to Thoreau's, King's occasion is in a jail cell, but for almost the majority of his essay. Both of these essays have occasions that take place during a time when there was a large amount of concern about social injustice of the government and it is understood why the authors would write their essays in the first place.
The audience allows the author to be focused on certain groups or individuals. Thoreau and King both aim at large audiences. Thoreau focuses on U.S. citizens, primarily intellectuals in the East and North of the United States. It can be understood that Thoreau's audience focuses on U.S. citizens because he often writes of the injustice that the government displays towards its people. For example, Thoreau writes, "Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?" On the other hand, King's audience is understood to be the eight clergymen that wrote against King's actions, but it is also implied that King's audience also includes the U.S. citizens and the world. Both of these authors have large audiences that greatly affect the amount of impact that the two essays have.
The purpose of a persuasive essay is to convince the reader to agree with an author's viewpoint or to accept the recommendation for the course of action. Thoreau's purpose is to convince his audience to not follow the majority, but do what is felt to be morally right. He also aims to expose the corruption of the government and encourage citizens to take action against civil injustice when necessary. King has very similar purposes aiming to disagree with social injustice, but his purposes also include that he is trying to defend himself and his organization, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, from protestors and the government that disagree with his movement for civil disobedience. He also aims to change public policy and bring the civil rights movement to national attention in order to increase the likelihood that his actions will cause good consequences and will not be futile. The purposes of both Thoreau's and King's essays are meant for improving the world around them.
The speaker of an essay is the voice that narrates in an essay. Both King and Thoreau speak with many different voices that help the audience understand where the author is coming from. In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau speaks as a critic, teacher, advisor, and advocate. King speaks as a minister, civil rights leader, visionary, advocate, and African American victim. Both speak as sorts of advisors, but King speaks almost as a "holy" advisor because of the fact that he is a minister. They similarly speak as advocates of civil disobedience, but Thoreau also portrays the fact that he speaks as a critic towards the government actions, when King is more respectful. Unlike Thoreau, King speaks as a minority that has been a victim of social injustice because of racial differences. Both speak with many different roles that connect the author with the audience.
The tone of an essay is the attitude of the author that is speaking. Both Thoreau and King speak with several tones that aim to evoke passion in the audience. Thoreau's tone is didactic, persuasive, and frustrated. Thoreau writes almost as a teacher that dictates directions to his pupils to go against the frustration he has for the government. Conversely, King's tone is understated, respectful, and calm. Although King is incarcerated, he still speaks calmly, which is the reason for why his tone is understated, and even though most people in his position would be furious at the government because he was locked up for unjust reasons, he remains respectful. If Thoreau was in the same position as King and persecuted for the color of his skin, he would be extremely angry compared to King.
Aristotle believed that the key to an effective persuasive essay is to include appeals in an essay that evokes pathos, ethos, and logos. Thoreau and King both include a balance of all three in their essays. King, however, seems to evoke more pathos than Thoreau does because of many of the rhetorical questions that King asks his audience and the examples of all the things a black cannot due and has to tell their child what they can and can't do. Thoreau effectively evokes logos when he writes, "He who gives himself entirely to his fellow men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist." He uses logos here in order to portray how foolish it would be to give oneself over to the government being useless. Both Thoreau and King effectively evoke logos, pathos, and ethos in their essays in order to persuade their audience that civil disobedience should be used if there is social injustice.
The rhetorical strategies that authors input in their persuasive essays aim to usually help the audience remember the text, or emphasize certain points. Both Thoreau and King input a plethora of rhetorical strategies. Thoreau's strategies include repetitions, extended metaphors, aphorisms, antithesis, examples, illustrations, and elaborations. Thoreau uses repetitions when he writes "It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate." These repetitions emphasize that the government does not do the following things, but the citizens in the country. Likewise, King also utilizes repetitions, but conversely uses rhetorical questions, appeals, metaphors, and allusions. King uses allusions often in his essay that are mostly biblical. For example, he writes, "Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid." These biblical allusions help to convince his audience that his actions are just and are comparative to the actions that Paul used. By doing this, he establishes himself as a credible source for information. As portrayed, both essays use many rhetorical strategies to overall persuade the audience to take action and use civil disobedience against the government.
Ultimately, if one was to look at the similarities of King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," they would notice that King may have been greatly influenced by Thoreau's essay. By analyzing the subject, occasion, audience, purpose, speaker, tone, appeals, and rhetorical strategies of the essays, it is obvious that King may have borrowed many of his ideas about civil disobedience from Thoreau. The two essays also have many differences that are evident throughout the analysis of the two essays that divide individual interpretation of each text, but it is obvious that the overall purpose of these two essays is to persuade the audiences that civil disobedience is necessary if there is social injustice in the government that governs someone.
