The Rhetorical Styles Of King

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means “worthy of belief,” and deals with establishing credibility. Pathos involves “putting hearers…into the right frame of mind with regard to certain issues and the speakers persuasive intent” (Smith 83). Logos includes the arguments that are used to make a point, and involves the basis upon which the arguments were made. The use of these three elements in harmony with each other will produce a persuasive argument according to Aristotle. Being that he did “write the book on rhetoric,” I will be using the ideas of Aristotle as the blueprint for effective writing to which I will compare the works of King and Morrison.
First I will examine Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter which embodies all of the characteristics outlined by Aristotle. The most clearly presented element in King’s article is the use of ethos. King establishes himself as a credible and learned man early in the letter so that the reader has an immediate ...

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and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’…and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the Gospel of Jesus Christ…so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town” (Corbett 302). He also employs this method when responding to the clergymen’s accusations calling him an extremist. In rebuttal to the accusation, he states that Jesus was an extremist as was Amos, Paul, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, Abe Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson. All of these characters are notable and considered heroes in one way or another. Comparing himself to them causes the argument of the clergymen to lose its strength and further ...

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