The Use of Rhetorical Techniques in Letters - Essay Example

Compare and contrast Martin Luther Kings “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and Michael Pollan’s “An Animal Place” use of rhetorical techniques The essays/letter of Martin Luther King entitled “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and Michael Pollan’s “An Animal Place” share the same theme of protesting about something albeit the nature and significance of the subjects they are protesting vary tremendously in importance. In Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, it spoke of the necessity of continuing the civil rights movement through non-violent action that segregation and discrimination against the Negroes may end that they may be equal with everyone else before the law. In Michael Pollan’s essay, he protested against the ill treatment of animals when they are slaughtered for us to eat. He protested against suffering albeit it is not about human suffering but of animal suffering. Nevertheless, both protested against something, Martin Luther King, a legendary civil rights leader that helped end the discrimination against the Negro while Michael Pollan is a reputable animal rights activist known for his advocacy for animal rights and against artificial method of growing agriculture. In protesting against animal cruelty and suffering, Pollan used the rhetorical technique of personification and analogy to be able to reason in behalf of animals whose suffering he intends to mitigate if not end. Personification is a rhetorical technique of giving objects or animals human-like attribute and qualities. He also used analogy, which is a rhetorical technique used to compare and reason similar instances. These devices of using personification and analogy are necessary for Pollan to use for him to elevate his subject (which are animals) to the province of human beings so that he can effectively argue for them. Martin Luther King on the other hand used a different rhetorical technique due to the nature of his letter which was an open letter by nature (it was addressed to clergymen, plural) to be read by anyone of his constituents and not expecting for a formal reply because he was coming from jail and was addressed to a lot of people. Thu Martin Luther King used rhetorical question/remarks in his letter whereby he posed a lot of questions in his call to action for the Negro to continue to assert through non-violent means to end segregation, discrimination and injustice. Thus his letter was peppered with rhetorical questions and remarks which numbered more than 28. Some of these rhetorical questions read as such; "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? One many think that these rhetorical technique is inflammatory that borders to anger. But it has to be noted to put the letter in proper perspective that such letter is Martin Luther King’s call to action. In a way his way to vent his frustration over the inaction of the church and the Negroes but was not said in anger as he clarifies in the letter “In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. There can be no deep disappointment where there in not deep love”. It is difficult to compare to the same level Pollan’s advocacy for animals with King’s civil rights movement. King was virtually upholding human dignity for the Negro to be treated as human beings while Pollan’s argument almost called for animals to be treated with relative dignity as he asserted for ending their suffering and argued like animals can reason. So to effectively argue for his case, Pollan had to use personification and analogy to effectively call for the end of suffering among animals otherwise he would not even make the case. Ethically, animals cannot be taken as human beings not only because they are not physically human but also they do not have the philosophical attribute that would make them human. That is, being a moral agent capable of discernment of what makes right and wrong nor can reason ((Webb 87-88). When Pollan cited in his essay “Animal’s place” “the animals we kill lead lives organized very much in the spirit of Descartes, who famously claimed that animals were mere machines, incapable of thought or feeling”, he was arguing in the hypothesis or being tentative because he was not able to establish that animals are capable of cognition in the definition of John Locke’s tabula rasa or the empirical experience of David Hume (Noonan 54). He may personified them to the use of rhetorical technique by the personification of animals to be taken by “science [that]is dismantling our claims to uniqueness as a species, discovering that such things as culture, tool making, language and even possibly self-consciousness are not the exclusive domain of Homo sapiens” and thereby by way of deduction animals feel like human beings and therefore can be personified as human too. Pollan’s assertion about animals and their sufferings may be a stretch but that is not to say that his entire advocacy and arguments should be dismissed. His alternatives of how animals should be treated are laudable. This is more acceptable because no longer did Descartes was dragged to justify that self-consciousness exist among animals. The argument that if animals were raised “humanely” (not necessarily treated as human beings) and killed painlessly they would flourish more in abundance is more grounded to reality. In sum, both essays emphasized that cruelty is not acceptable both to animals and especially among humans. Some of their arguments may be far-fetched especially Pollan with his assertion to be more “humane” with animals but the use of rhetorical techniques makes the argument plausible such as his personification of animals and analogy that recent progress in science is dismantling our claims to uniqueness and not exclusive to us. With King, his mastery for rhetoric not only made his letters and speeches convincing but helped advanced his cause to the benefit of ending segregation which had caused so much suffering and injustice among the Negroes in America. Work Cited Noonan, Harold W. “Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hume on Knowledge”. Routledge, London, GBR, 1999 Webb, Clement C. J. “A History of Philosophy”. Batoche Books, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, 2001 Read More