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Letter from Birmingham Jail and Civil Disobedience


            "In Civil Disobedience", Henry David Thoreau, stresses on the true .
             importance of the individual and his power to alter governmental injustices. .
             Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in "Letter from Birmingham Jail", places strong .
             emphasis on direct action to impose reform, while promoting the equalization .
             of rights for all individuals. Both authors incorporate strong rhetorical .
             strategies that appeal to the lectors, such as ethos and pathos. However, .
             King's piece exalts effectively due to the genuine modesty he portrays a .
             quality Thoreau lacks provoking a reverse reaction than the one desired.
             The ability to strike an individual with emotion is the ability to detect .
             that debile section of the human and touch the true depths of their natural .
             sentiments. King utilizes emotion in a tremendous way by quoting the Bible .
             and mentioning Christ's doings. He takes in consideration that the .
             components of his audience are clergymen that assumingly have a profound .
             study of the Bible and intends to persuade them with this knowledge .
             tactically. When he incorporates passages of the Bible, he compares them to .
             actions he has or will act upon in good faith: "Like Paul, I must constantly .
             respond to the Macedonian call for aid". Here King compares his predicating .
             of freedom with that of the Apostle Paul's of the gospel. King later uses a .
             different form of emotional appeal when he speaks of his personal encounters .
             with racism, quoting his five year old son with an ingenuous question: .
             "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?". With statements .
             such as these, King places the reader in a small area of his life, stating .
             events he has lived and sensed, enabling the piece to penetrate further .
             within its lectors.
             Thoreau possesses a very dry emotional appeal in his piece because of his .
             lack of modesty, that almost makes his statements and remarks seem despotic. .
             However, the emotional appeal, although found vaguely within his writing and .


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