At the conclusion of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1967 collection of lectures, The Trumpet of Conscience, appears this surprising 75-word sentence:
In a world facing the revolt of ragged and hungry masses of God's children; in a world torn between the tensions of East and West, white and colored, individualists and collectivists; in a world whose cultural and spiritual power lags so far behind her technological capabilities that we live each day on the verge of nuclear co-annihilation; in this world, nonviolence is no longer an option for intellectual analysis, it is an imperative for action.
King's pacifist philosophy of nonviolence does not come as a jolt; in fact, it is the hallmark of all this masterful communicator's messages. His syntax, however, is another story on at least four counts. First, his juxtaposing of the immanent terms cultural and spiritual with technological capabilities comes unexpectedly, forcing us to search our priorities in a way we might not have previously. Then comes the relative clause that we live each day on the verge of nuclear co-annihilation, following the two unqualified prepositional phrases in a world facing the revolt and in a world torn. Next King switches from the thrice-used, parallel in a world to the more immediate and intensive in this world. Finally, he concludes with a comma splice after intellectual analysis, knowing a semicolon or period would be more grammatically proper and a dash more dramatic. Instead he chooses to end abruptly with the comma to add to the urgency of his assertion. Such is the stuff of powerful rhetoric.
