Michelle Sorto

Period 3
3 - 21 - 19

Persuasive writing and speaking can advance the progress for social justice and equality
because it can convince people to act in some form or another. The purpose of Letter From
Birmingham Jail was to respond to the clergymen and persuade them to allow Martin Luther
King Jr. to act/protest. The purpose of Genetics of Justice was to persuade the audience to
stand up for justice. The purpose of Address to U.N. Youth Assembly was ti advocate for
women’s rights, girls’ education, and free education all over the world for every child. Each text
uses rhetoric through forms of ethos, pathos, logos, and/or sequence of events. However of the
three texts, Letter from Birmingham Jail does the best job of advancing his purpose because
Martin Luther King Jr. does a great job of using ethos, logos, pathos, and sequence of events to
explain why he should be allowed to act. He especially uses pathos the best as he not only
pertains to the people’s emotions, but also to their faith.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s purpose for his Letter From Birmingham Jail was to respond to
the clergymen and persuade them to allow him to act/protest. Martin Luther King Jr. uses pathos
by using the clergymen’s faith to explain why he should be allowed to act. “And just like the
Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically
every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of
freedom byond my particular home town” (King 1). This advances his purpose because he’s
using their own faith against the clergymen so that they can’t stop him since their faith allows
him to act and protest. Martin Luther King Jr. also uses ethos to build his credibility to show that
he can reply to the clergymen on the same level. “My dear fellow clergymen” (King 1). This
advances his purpose because he’s showing that he knows what he’s talking about as he’s one
of them and isn’t some random guy thinking he can respond to the clergymen without knowing
anything. Martin Luther King Jr. is very successful when using rhetoric as things started
changing after his letter was published. However since this mainly pertains to those of the same
faith as his, those who do not believe or believe something entirely different might not have been
as easily persuaded
Julia Alvarez’s purpose for her Genetics of Justice was to persuade her audience to
stand up for justice. Julia Alvarez uses sequence of events to show how her mother was
affected even as a child. “Respectable families such as hers kept their daughters out of the
public eyes, for Trujillo was known to have an appetite for pretty girls, and once his eye was
caught, there was no refusing him” (Alvarez 1). This advances her purpose because she’s
showing how bad it was in the beginning and how it got worse over time, so someone needed to
take a stand for justice and end it. Julia Alvarez also uses pathos to show how her parents were
affected emotionally through their suffering. “And so, even after we had left, my parents were still
living in the dictatorship inside their own heads. Even on American soil, they were afraid of awful
consequences if they spoke out or disagreed with authorities” (Alvarez 4). This advances her
purpose because she’s making the audience sympathetic for their suffering and want to stand
up against it. Julia Alvarez was kind of successful in using rhetoric and she even gave her own
example of how she stood up on her own for justice. However, there wasn’t much logos or ethos
used to advance her purpose which really could have helped.
Malala Yousafzai’s purpose for her Address to U.N. Youth Assembly was to advocate
for women’s rights, girls’ education, and free education for every child. Malala Yousafzai uses
pathos by using anyone’s sense of faith. “But first of all thank you to God for whom we are all
equal and thank you to every person who has prayed for my fast recovery and new life”
(Yousafzai 1). This advances her purpose because she is saying that we are all equal, everyone
regardless of who they are, should be allowed to have an education; not just the men, or the
wealthy, or those who live in better countries. She also uses ethos to build her credibility by
aligning herself with world leaders. “This is the compassion I have learned from Mohammed, the
prophet of mercy, Jesus Christ and Lord Buddha. This is the legacy of change that I have
inherited from Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mohammed Ali Jinnah” (Yousafzai 2).
This advances her purpose by showing how she can take what she’s learned and advocate for
something along the lines of what they did. Malala Yousafzai was pretty successful in using
rhetoric and uses her own experiences to really build up her credibility. Although, she didn’t use
much logos or sequence of events to advance her purpose which could have made her really
successful.
Letter From Birmingham Jail has the best rhetoric used because he uses all four of the
rhetorics: ethos, logos, pathos, and even sequence of events. He knew just how to get to people
and make them see why they needed to change the way they were. The other texts could have
improved by using all forms of rhetoric and giving multiple of examples of each just like Martin
Luther King Jr. did. Even though they all have an area or two to fix, they all were successful in
some way or another. Letter From Birmingham Jail : pathos, Genetics of Justice : sequence of
events, and Address To U.N. Youth Assembly : ethos. All of them used their own personal
experiences which really did push their arguments further.