The Promotion of Social Awakening through the Speech of Lewis Richardson: A Metaphorical Lens that is Echoed Today

Abstract

This analysis will illustrate how a journey through the lens of metaphorical criticism can openly display the hardships, life, and reality of past African American voices, as their stories echo through the rhetor, Lewis Richardson. An examination of a striking speech that speaks volumes, recited by Lewis Richardson, will unravel the depth in imagery, interpretation, and symbolism from an application of a metaphorical critical lens that tells a story that just keeps getting louder and louder as it grows unheard. “When metaphor is seen as a way of knowing the world, it plays a particular role in argumentation” [8]. This artifact’s use of metaphor builds an argumentative case for freedom, justice, and empathy. The following analysis will shed light on how authentic slave testimony, metaphor, symbolism, personification, and juxtapositions, once coded, can bring us to a reality that may not seem so unfamiliar in comparison to our current climate of racial social instability which has erupted in an uproar of protests, movements such as Black Lives Matter, as well as a full-blown unravelling social awakening.