Rhetorical Distance in "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

This essay explores the concept of rhetorical distance as the counterpart of esthetic distance. Rhetorical distance functions as a critical lens through which one may view Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." It reveals King's artistry in controlling an array of implied symbolic spatial relationships to achieve rhetorical ends. Chief among these relationships are those that divided King from his ostensible audience, his ostensible audience from his actual audience, his actual audience from that level of illumination required for them to grasp the issues agitated by King's movement, and the chasm that separated African Americans from the heritage promised them by mythic America. The essay revisits more precisely the contrasts between rhetoric and poetic, and explores a tragic ethical flaw that may lie at the heart of the human communication condition. The essay concludes by considering how the "Letter"'s rhetoric served the prevailing journalistic melodrama and by connecting its work to the functions of rhetorical depiction.