One of the most noticeable differences between King and myself is our varying application of techniques to create different images in the minds of the listener/reader. Imagery is one example of this: King often presents imagery in the way of perfection- something to aim towards- such as his obvious, vivid and ideal vision of “the promised land”. I on the other hand, more often than not use imagery to exaggerate the bleakness and hostility of some situations, such as my powerful metaphor: “the walls of Capitalism”, and predominant, drawn-out personification: “glows the fake plastic smile of fashion”. Imagery is also utilised by King to describe place, something that could otherwise take away from the passion and movement of the speech, such as the audacious examples “the red hills of Georgia” and “every hill and every molehill of Mississippi.” along with others from his “I have a dream” speech, all of which have the potential to be said hurriedly at the climax of King’s excitement.( I on the other hand like to use decrepit, vulgar imagery to emphasise my passionate hate for commercialism and the Capitalist regime, such as the striking examples: “the commercialism-ridden prison that is the town of Chelmsford” and “a sea of fads and motifs”, with the purpose of being read slowly whilst emotions are being pent up, until a point when these can all be let out in fury: whilst Luther King uses imagery as the culmination of his emotional oration, I use it as just the beginning.)
King and I both use factorial evidence to back up our speeches, yet again in very different ways. King successfully combines the repetition of the rousing theme of his near-death encounter when he was stabbed with facts from American history relating to the liberation of blacks in America through to his current stand in history: “If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963…”. Thus whilst King uses historical and factual evidence as his stepping-stone and justification of his actions, I use it in an altogether different manner. Within the answer, there is clever repetition of the question “in 1990 which health service was regarded as the world’s best?”, as I give factorial evidence that links to America and commercialism are not the only way to live, thus I in a way use evidence as my weapon, proving that my dreams are accomplishable.
Somewhere where I believe I have been more successful than King is in my application of questions. Arguably, King knows that he has support from his listeners; they are his fans and so he does not need to question and argue with them. I on the other hand am speaking to the enemy, as it were, and hence need to use rhetorical questions to convince my listeners that they are wrong. Hence, I feel I have been able to vigorously hammer a barrage of questions at my listeners, each of them critical and often insulting: ( “Does that tick on your shoes really raise your self-respect?” ) (here I have also skilfully incorporated alliteration on the letter ‘r’) “And you think commercialism is the only way to live?” This technique is not comparable to anything in King’s speech, it really showing the difference between us: King making passionate dreams to people that already agree with him; I suggesting revolutionary, hateful ideas to people who’s support I must win over. )
Much as with the beginning of a speech, the end is also vitally important if your intention is to leave the listeners with something to think about. For this paragraph I will take King’s “I have a dream” speech into account, when comparing my skills in ending a speech to his. The first thing to notice is the difference in length between our two endings. Whilst King has reached several climaxes in his speech already, his final paragraph does not have to be very long to reach another. However in my speech I feel that it is best to have one major pinnacle at the end of the speech whilst maintaining audience interest up to this point, hence my final paragraph is longer. Both King and I use repetition successfully, though arguably King may use it a little too sparingly in this instant, whilst I may overuse it, almost every other sentence in this paragraph being ( “The power is in the people”, a modified version of Lenin’s Soviet slogan “All power to the Soviets [the collective group of people supporting him]”; )I however feel this is very striking, especially when most of the other sentences are very log, thus creating varied syntax. There are many bold images used by both of us: King keeps to his usual system of using vivid imagery to emphasise his goals (“let freedom ring”, “all of God’s children…join hands”). In addition to this, our paragraphs vary in that whilst my speech really ends on the penultimate sentence- the following sentence merely supporting this- “The power is in the people.”, King’s speech climaxes again in his final words: “ ‘Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ ”, leaving I feel a greater lasting impression on his audience.
In conclusion, I feel there is no way of telling who is the better speech maker, myself or King, due to the diversity of our topics. However, I feel that King has the obvious advantage over myself, as whilst I am merely using techniques in creative writing in a classroom or at home, Martin Luther King actually addressed the masses with his controversial views; something which inevitably led to his assassination, on April 4th 1968.
