2.

02 Language in King's Letter Worksheet

1. …when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you
seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement
park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her little
eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing
clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky…

● Type of figurative language: Metaphor

● Meaning of figurative language: The metaphor is “depressing clouds of
inferiority” this is talking about how segregation led to african americans feeling
or thinking of themselves as less than
● Effect on tone and mood: It makes the entry have a darker tone of sadness
● Effect on audience: It expresses the parent's impotence when explaining to
their child why they can’t go to the amusement park and how they're "less than"
in a broader perspective.

2. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened
with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must
likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human
conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

● Type of figurative language: Simile

● Meaning of figurative language: The simile is “like a boil” this emphasizes the
ugly injustice nature and how it must be dealt with
● Effect on tone and mood: There is a gory tone but also a hopeful mood when
showing a solution to the problem
● Effect on audience: It allows the audience to understand that injustice should be
exposed to the eyes of the nation before it finds a solution.

3. Over and over again I have found myself asking: "Who worships here? Who is their
God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of
interposition and nullification? Where were their voices of support when tired, bruised,
and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of
complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"

● Type of figurative language: Metaphor

● Meaning of figurative language: The metaphor is "...men and women decided to
rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"
the meaning of this is that their feeling of protest was so strong that they couldn't
keep it a secret and they ran out of patience and couldn't wait anymore so they
protested.
● Effect on tone and mood: It lets you picture how miserable the men and women
were, and how they had a hard life. The mood is tense at first but then it
becomes uplifting with the strength they had to fight the injustice.
● Effect on audience: The writer wrote about the feelings of these men and
women and the effect it had on the audience will be a lasting impression.

4. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and
principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

● Type of figurative language: Metaphor

● Meaning of figurative language: The metaphor is that they’re comparing the
church to a thermometer or thermostat which is measuring the humor in
society.
● Effect on tone and mood: The author’s tone is using this metaphor to make it
easy to understand the role of the church and the mood, the author creates a
serious atmosphere in the text.
● Effect on audience: The audience can better understand the social situation in
those days.

5. It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that, if I
had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish
brothers even though it was illegal.

● Type of figurative language: Alliteration

● Meaning of figurative language: It repeats words such as Jew, illegal, and
 Germany
● Effect on tone and mood: I feel like the tone would be friendliness and a sense
of hope.
● Effect on audience: The effect it had on the audience would be reassuring.

6. Analysis Question: How does Dr. King use figurative language to support his feelings
about equal civil rights for African-Americans?

Dr. King uses figurative language to create images in the reader's mind to connect
better and show the civil rights movement and how what it was like.