"I Have a Dream"

Can you imagine being tormented and belittled because of the color of your hair or the way you looked? Would you want to be the person that had to use the other restroom or sit on the back of the bus? Luckily, American culture has slipped past this phase of history, and gratefully so. We could currently be in this drudgery of human prejudice and racial discrimination if it wasn’t for Martin Luther King Jr. famous speech “I Have a Dream” given on Aug, 8, 1963. In his speech, Martin Luther King uses extreme repetition to emphasis the importance of accepting everyone for who they are, no matter their race or ethnicity.

The use of pounding and repeating words over and over is a great tactic to instill any information into the human mind. It is the way that our brains process the importance of the material and store it, eventually creating our human intellect. Martin Luther King completed the phrase “I Have a Dream,” a total of nine times throughout his speech, thus portraying the significance of what he had been dreaming about. He saw how racial discrimination was destroying American culture, and how much more peaceful life would be if everyone was treated equally. Through the use of repetition he made this speech one of the most memorable speeches in American History. When the name Martin Luther King is mentioned to me, my initial thought is “I Have a Dream.” There is no way I would think of this if he had not repeated this phrase nine times in his speech. If he had only mentioned this phrase once I might think of it as the “Make Life Better for the Blacks,” speech instead. By the end of his speech the message that he wanted to get across was absolutely apparent. Everyone listening knew that he had a dream, that all people, both blacks and whites, would be treated 100% equal. There were no questions about it.

In this speech repetition was extremely effective. Martin Luther King did a wonderful job painting his imaginative dream into the minds of those listening to him. His dream became a world wide dream eventually leading to peace and tranquility regarding racial discrimination. I will forever remember Martin Luther Kings dream and what it did to make this country what it is today.