King’s Words Start a Fire

Recall the writing prompt for this unit:

What makes King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" powerful and effective? After reading
King's letter, answer the question by analyzing how he uses structure and language
purposefully in his text. Provide specific examples from the text to support your analysis.

Your study of language in this assignment will begin to help you answer this question and respond to
the prompt later in the unit.

Like protest songs, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” includes many examples
of figurative language meant to persuade people to take action.

In each line, an instance of figurative language is already identified for you. Use what you learned in
the lesson to identify the type of figurative language, explain what the figurative language means,
and explain the tone and mood of the line from the letter.

Some parts of the chart are already completed for you.

is an example of
…

and
(Which type of creates a
figurative _________
language such ___ tone
as metaphor,
simile, and a
personification,
The line … from “Letter from Birmingham symbol, or _________
Jail” allusion?) that means… mood.
Example: The movement Factual
grows because tone
of the people’s
This movement is nourished by the contemporary Personification frustration with
frustration over the continued existence of racial racial Urgent
discrimination. discrimination. mood

Metaphor She is angry Sad Tone

1. …and see the tears welling up in her little about the racist
eyes when she is told that Funtown is
closed to colored children, and see the actions against
depressing clouds of inferiority begin to her
form in her little mental sky…

Angry
Mood

Metaphor Talking about Stressed

2. There comes a time when the cup of how men are Tone
endurance runs over, and men are no
longer willing to be plunged into an abyss
of injustice where they experience the
bleakness of corroding despair.

Urgent
mood

Symbol Socrates Serious

3. To a degree academic freedom is a reality disobeyed laws Tone
today because Socrates practiced civil
that were not
fair, which
made it so
 Thought-
students today provoking
disobedience. can think freely mood
(and possibly
differently than
their teachers).

allusion That injustice Serious

needs to be Tone
4. Like a boil that can never be cured as shown and
long as it is covered up but must be
opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to talked about
the natural medicines of air and light, more
injustice must likewise be exposed, with Tought-
all of the tension its exposing creates, to
the light of human conscience and the air provking
of national opinion before it can be cured. Mood

Metaphor The church did Serious

not just reflect Tone
5. In those days the Church was not merely what was
a thermometer that recorded the ideas
and principles of popular opinion; it was a happening in Thought
thermostat that transformed the mores of society; it Provoking
society. Mood
actually had the
ability to change
what was
happening in
society.
 Allusion That the
misunderstandi Optimistic
6. Let us all hope the dark clouds of racial ng and tone
prejudice will soon pass away and the
deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted wrongness of
from our fear-drenched communities… racial prejudice.
Hopeful
mood

Metaphor That people

are afraid and Disapointed
7. Let us all hope the dark clouds of racial its consuming tone
prejudice will soon pass away and the
deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted them like
from our fear-drenched communities… drenched
clothes
consume the Sad Mood
water