I've been to the mountain top

In-class forum discussion on MLK's Mountain top speech: https://discovery.northwestu.edu/mod/forum/view.php?f=1817

My post is here:

His main thesis is that victory will come for the people in support of the civil rights movement. 

He also uses support in terms of different examples through out history in which people have “overcome” great adversity, how God has ultimately gained the victory like the Exodus and the Emancipation Proclamation.  He also uses different allusions to the bible like, “you see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road,” and at the very end he quotes the, “Battle hymn of the Republic.”

He also uses humor when he repeats the phrase, “If I had sneezed.”  At first the phrase seems comical, but in it’s context it is incredibly powerful.  It helps to lighten the mood after he talks about the first assination attempt on his life while not deterring from his point of how change has already come to America and how it will continue to be apart of America.

He obviously uses allusion as he refers to the “mountain top” and the “promised land.”  The other figure of speech he uses is repetition when he repeats the phrase, “If I had sneezed,” and “somewhere I read.” A rhetorical device that he uses is he identifies himself with the audience.  He is speaking at Mason Temple, which is the Church of God in Christ Headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee.  And he identifies with his audience through the central allusion of Moses as well as imitating the form of the beginning of Moses’ speech to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 29.

King’s conclusion is very similar to Deut.  29&32 in that he remarks on how there will be difficult roads ahead, as Moses told the Israelites.  But also, he talks about how he won’t enter the promised land with them – we know from the biographical research King was assassinated the next day – just as the Lord told Moses he too wouldn’t be entering the promised land but would die instead on Mount Nebo.