“I have a dream”…by Martin Luther King, Jr

We have studied the speech of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” today. The speech is said to be one of the best speeches spoken in the world before. Martin Luther King Jr, one of the Peaceful Warriors in the world, who uses non violence approach of freedom, listed along with Nelson Mandela, Gandhi and etc had given a speech on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. This speech “I have a dream” is about the plight of his people, talking about the liberation of the African American, to unite the whites and blacks in America and this speech is to motivate them to work and live harmoniously together in American. This speech is one of the best in the world as this speech is of good and suitable content to motivate its citizen to act unitarily. This speech is also worth to be studied as it contains a lot of literary elements such as binaries, imageries, symbolisms, and metaphors. The examples of binaries used in this speech are the use of shadow and light, daybreak and night, island and ocean, poverty and prosperity and many more. It is impressive that the binaries are used in a same sentence. Moreover, binaries such as now and gradualism, dark and sunlit and lastly, quicksand and solid rock are used in order to show the comparison and how things differ from one and another. There is also the repetition used of the word “must” which shows the obligation of the citizen to their country. The stylistic writings of this speech made this speech a great speech, one that has power to move the people to take action and act according to the speech. If you have not heard any speech that is so powerful and charismatic before, listen to this one and I am sure that you will be impressed. Dr Edwin had also showed us the a Youtube video clip of Martin Luther King Jr giving his speech years ago at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. According to our lecturer, if Martin Luther King Jr’s speech “I have a dream” is a good speech and Martin Luther King Jr is a powerful speaker then, in our country, Tunku Abdul Rahman with his speech of “Declaration of Independence” in our country would be the most powerful speaker and speech. None of us in the class have heard of the speech of “Declaration of Indepence” by Tunku Abdul Rahman before and none of us know the content of the speech but Dr Edwin had read the speech before in a hotel in Malacca and he hoped that everyone of us could get to read the speech ourselves if we were to do our practical in Malacca. I am really interested and look forward to speech by Tunku Abdul Rahman. I am just so proud that our nations once have had a powerful and good speaker such as Tunku Abdul Rahman.