An excerpt from MLK's "A Knock at Midnight" Sermon.

 An excerpt from MLK's "A Knock at Midnight" Sermon.

And there is the deep longing for the bread of love. Everybody wishes to love and be loved. He who feels that he is not loved feels that he does not count. Much has happened in the modern world to make men feel that they do not belong. Living in a world which has become oppressively impersonal, many of us have come to feel that we are little more than numbers. Ralph Borsodi in an arresting picture of a world wherein numbers have replaced persons writes that the modern mother is often maternity case No. 8434 and her child, after being fingerprinted and footprinted, becomes No. 8003, and that a funeral in a large city is an event in Parlor B with Class B flowers and decorations at which Preacher No. 14 officiates and Musician No. 84 sings Selection No. 174. Bewildered by this tendency to reduce man to a card in a vast index, man desperately searches for the bread of love.

When the man in the parable knocked on his friend’s door and asked for the three loaves of bread, he received the impatient retort, "Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything." How often have men experienced a similar disappointment when at midnight they knock on the door of the church. Millions of Africans, patiently knocking on the door of the Christian church where they seek the bread of social justice, have either been altogether ignored or told to wait until later, which almost always means never. Millions of American Negroes, starving for the want of the bread of freedom, have knocked again and again on the door of so-called white churches, but they have usually been greeted by a cold indifference or a blatant hypocrisy. Even the white religious leaders, who have a heartfelt desire to open the door and provide the bread, are often more cautious than courageous and more prone to follow the expedient than the ethical path. One of the shameful tragedies of history is that the very institution which should remove man from the midnight of racial segregation participates in creating and perpetuating the midnight.

In the terrible midnight of war men have knocked on the door of the church to ask for the bread of peace, but the church has often disappointed them. What more pathetically reveals the irrelevancy of the church in present-day world affairs than its witness regarding war? In a world gone mad with arms buildups, chauvinistic passions, and imperialistic exploitation, the church has either endorsed these activities or remained appallingly silent. During the last two world wars, national churches even functioned as the ready lackeys of the state, sprinkling holy water upon the battleships and joining the mighty armies in singing, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." A weary world, pleading desperately for peace, has often found the church morally sanctioning war.

    This excerpt is from the part in "A Knock at Midnight" where MLK speaks about the longing for the bread on love, one of the loaves of bread he speaks about. This is a direct allusion to the story from Luke that this sermon centers around. The first line is a parallelism to the openers for the other loaves of bread in the sermon and acts to split up and distinguish the different sections of the speech. Using this MLK is able to separate the bread of Faith, Hope, Love, Peace and Economic Justice into neat sections. For the bread of love specifically, there are some interesting rhetorical devices. Starting off there is an appeal to authority in that of Ralph Borsodi, MLK uses Borsodi to reaffirm his claims about a feeling of being just a number. MLK uses the "No. XYZ" as a type of repetition of parallelism to make his point about numbered living.

    After this MLK alludes back to the story from Luke, tying the speech back to the story and returning it to the listener/reader's mind. This also is no doubt an appeal to religion and authority since he expresses the ideas in this sermon through the story. In good MLK fashion, there is a lot of figurative speech as he works to paint a picture in the listener's head for every point he makes. I this section this manifests mainly through the symbol of knocking on the door of the church. A figurative way of describing how many have looked to the church for guidance and in modern times have left disappointed. Here is also an allusion to other speeches and sermons when MLK makes the correlation between wait and never. MLK has raised this claim before and this point alludes to many other speeches.

    In his last paragraph on the church's acceptance of war, MLK sneaks in a tricolon in the line: "In a world gone mad with arms buildups, chauvinistic passions, and imperialistic exploitation, the church has either endorsed these activities or remained appallingly silent". Tricolon sounds naturally good to the ear, so it stands to reason that's why it's used. MLK also often personifies larger groups like "a weary world" in this case, which is "pleading desperately for peace". This works toward painting a picture in the audience's head.

    Overall this excerpt is full of figurative speech with many parts that tie in with other parts of the speech, MLK is very talented at expressing all of his main points throughout his speeches and weaving together all of the different parts into a cohesive narrative. He also uses a tasteful amount of rhetorical devices that really make his speeches feel alive and engaging. He's a prime example of rhetoric done right.