King's Letter from Birmingham Jail shows how a skilled writer can use the Aristotlean elements of rhetoric to tremendous effect. First, the context: King is writing in 1963. He has been jailed for engaging in protests in Birmingham against "Whites only" signs in city stores. By 1963, he had become a national figure in the civil rights movement. So the letter is written by a great man, who is in jail for protesting against racism, who seeks to defend his actions and answer his critics.
Ethos is the credibility of the speaker and can be the trickiest rhetorical element to identify. This is because so often one's credibility lies in actions, not words. King does go to some trouble to establish his authority within the movement when he explains that he has "organizational ties" that bring him to Birmingham; he also connects his work to the work of the apostles in spreading the gospel. But what truly establishes his credibility is not anything that he says, per se, but what he has done. Think, for a moment, about how the impact of this letter might change if it were known as "Letter from the Birmingham Hyatt Regency" instead of "Letter from Birmingham Jail"!
Logos is persuasion through the use of facts. One example of this approach can be found in King's painstakingly detailed explanation of why he chose to stage his protests when he did: he lays out, very specifically, the chronology of events, how he decided to not act during the mayoral election cycle, and the training that was provided for the demonstrators. In recounting these facts, he is arguing that his decisions were clearly thought out and logical.
Pathos is persuasion through the appeal to the emotions, but what this really means is writing in such a way that your reader feels what you feel. Out of many passages, perhaps the most affecting is when he explains why it is essential not to "wait" for change. King is able to explain the degradation of racism in a single, incredible sentence:
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
It is important to note that often students think of ethos, logos, and pathos as being separate things, like different kinds of rocks, but this is really not the case. The sentence above, for example, is meant to explain in clear terms the black experience‚—it is meant to make the reader empathize with blacks. But, although it is not referring to any specific fact, it also has power because it alludes to things we agree are factual: people were lynched; amusement parks were segregated. In that sense it can be thought of as logos. And, the power of the sentence, the clarity of King's thought, the rhythm of his prose style—these things mark the author as someone of exceptional gifts, not only as a writer, but as a leader. So, it also serves to establish his ethos.
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