1. Letter from a Birmingham Jail

2. Warm-Up Have out your homework (short rhetorical analysis blurb)
Write the following on a scratch sheet of paper:
Chose an aphorism or absolute statement from MLK
Respond to the following question: Does this quote still bear significance today?

3. Criteria? The short response must:
How the device works/ author’s purpose in using device
How the device/strategy affects audience
does it contextualize the quote (how does accomplish purpose and sub-purpose?)

4. Thoreau
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

5. Thoreau
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.”

6. Thoreau
“Why does [the government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?”

7. Thoreau
“For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?”

8. Consideration

9. Thoreau-MLK-Today
Do you agree with MLK that an individual must act out against an unjust law?
If so, where does your citizenry end in today’s contemporary society?
What does civil disobedience look like?
What are the consequences to civil disobedience?

10. Review Chart/Questions
Complete the following for MP and MLK:
Write at least one question for each of the main pieces (MP, TDITWC, and MLK).
Speaker(Persona)
Purpose
Audience
Device/Strategies
Structure
Tone

11. Breakdown of Question 10 Humor Terms 7 Modest Proposal 7 MLK 16 TDITWC
5 Close Reading
Short Answer