Final Exam Blog- Why We Can't Wait

The book Why We Wait by Martin Luther King Jr. has done an excellent job at portraying the learning outcome of how audience and purpose affect the structure and content of texts.  For example, there is a passage from Dr. King's letter to Birmingham that says, "There comes a time when the cup..... our legitimate and unavoidable impatience(93)his was written to the clergymen who doubted his methods and questioned on his timing.  In this passage it is clear that Dr. King wants to use emotion to explain why the time is now for the movement.  He also knows that because of the critical audience, he must sound intelligent and that is why he includes many examples of figurative language here, such as the cup of endurance and abyss of despair.  He wants to persuade the clergymen that he knows what he is doing and that they have already waited long enough so he includes these brilliant metaphors to show it.  The most important aspect seems to be that he makes a great effort to sound intelligent and this makes his structure complex and full of concrete details.  Another example that portrays this learning outcome is, "Nonviolence is a powerful and... Negro Revolution of 1963." (16)  In this passage Dr. King uses the metaphor that describes nonviolence as a sword that fights against injustice without losing wars.  He knows that he has many white readers as well as black readers, so he again uses figurative language to seem intelligent.  He cleverly uses words such as injustice and "healing sword" to make the white readers believe that his method of nonviolence is just as well as his cause.  His purpose of rallying everyone to use nonviolence for this cause forces him to include moral support in his text to make the readers believe that it is justified.  His text includes concrete details as well as abstract concepts to appeal to the audience and to clearly show his purpose.