“I Have a Dream” and “The Gettysburg Address” are two powerful speeches delivered by two big leaders of the American nation
“I Have a Dream” and “The Gettysburg Address” are two powerful speeches delivered by two big leaders of the American nation: Martin Luther King and Lincoln. Both of these speeches are united in the hopes of creating a better country and achieving the American dream. The two discourses are an introduction to a change or to an improvement. Both influenced history at different time for very similar beliefs. Lincoln and King both fought for African Americans. Lincoln fought for their freedom; he believed that slavery should be abolished and that African Americans should be free. Lincoln fought for his beliefs in freedom of every man.
In the Gettysburg Address the setting uses pathos. Lincoln showed respect, sorrow and remembrance for the soldiers that died for the country. At the beginning of his speech, he used the fact that our fathers brought forth a great and unified nation that has now been torn apart by the Civil War. Lincoln gives his address on the battlefield of Gettysburg, where a great battle happened resulting in the loss of thousands of lives.
“I have a Dream” uses logos when he says “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds” This comparison is made due to everyone understands money and that the audience is able to relate to being handed a bad check.
The purpose of both the “Gettysburg address” and “I have a dream” is His speech empowers and encourages the audience to make a stand against discrimination. The language of the two speeches is very different. Lincoln’s is sincere and noble, as becoming the dedication of a national cemetery, and more abstract, directing to a ceremonial occasion. King’s language is more concrete, metaphorical, poetic, emotive, as he seeks to mobilize a movement of a long history of suffering. Lincoln is not making an abolitionist speech, but rather seeking to strengthen Union to see the war to an end.
Beside for the parallel structure in both of these speeches, they are still fighting for the same thing one hundred years apart. Though the African-Americans were free from the burdens of slavery they were not free from the bondage’s of racism. If it were not for these two speeches, the world would have not seen the importance of the African-Americans plight for equality.
