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UFRN

Anderson do Nascimento Reis

March, 24th, 2011

Impression paper: about the text The World House

In this paper I will talk about some issues which can be found from the reading

of the essay of Martin Luther King called The world house. This essay talks about

many social aspects. In this paper, I will try to show to the reader some points about the

world society brought by King according to his text and adding, when I judge

necessary, my opinion and some criticism if there are some.

The world in Kings text is treated and named as our home. He says at very

begging that all of us, human beings, have inherited a large house and we must learn

how to live in peace on it. No matter our religion, where we are from, whether we are

white or black. This world is our home and there is no other place we can live apart

from each other. In this point I personally agree with him. What are the differences

which make us higher or lower than other people? Are those differences so deep that

make us to fight against our similar? We are all human beings, all equals. We have to

live in this world respecting each other in order to achieve that so dreamed world

peace.

The author says in his essay that we are part of a great neighborhood and this is a

result of the modern scientific and technological revolution. I believe that is true. Today

we are more connected than one hundred ago, for instance. Nowadays we have the

internet (to cite the most used technology in our time) which link us with the rest of

the world. We can know more about other cultures, people and seeing what is


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happening in this exact moment. Our distance has been decreased more and more

thanks to technology, we can say we are closer to the rest of the world than ever before.

Another point brought by King in his text is the moment of the Negro people

revolution that United States witnessed. He says that Negro people wanted freedom and

equality in a deep and passionate way. What was happening in the United States was a

significant part of a world development. They were passing for a moment of changes,

not only them but the rest of the world too. And that is very clear when he says: What

we are seeing now is a freedom explosion, the realization of an idea whose time has

come, to use Victor Hugos phrase. The deep rumbling of discontent that we hear

today is the thunder of disinherited masses, rising from dungeons of oppression to the

bright hills of freedom.(par. 7). With this situation lived in USA many years ago, we

can make some relationship with the revolutions which are happening in Arabic

countries today. In that time there were black people trying to be free in the Occident

and today there are Arabic population trying also to be free in the Orient. As the Kings

world was in a transformation process, ours is as well. Changes are part of history of

mankind and always will be.

King criticizes what he calls poverty of spirit of the United States (and probably

of the world too). He says it is very contrasting the way they had developing in

technology and the moral progress they forgot in favor of their material richness. The

richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.

(KING, par. 11). This spirit and moral poverty can be observed in our own lives. Some

of rich people sometimes become selfish, the more they have, the more they want and

then forget about those who need help, or even about their own family. They become

poor of spirit or moral. Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to

become lost in the external. We have allowed the means by which we live to


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outstanding the ends for which we live. So much of modern life can be summarized in

that suggestive phrase of Thoreau: Improved means to an unimproved end. (KING,

par. 12)

Yet according what King says, we have to find a way to balance our material

progress and moral progress, the second one cannot be suffocated by the first one. We

have to learn how to use our technology and material achievements without forgetting

about our moral and (for those who believe) spirit.

As we could see in these brief commentaries I have made here about this Kings

essay, this work of Martin Luther King is even more than a simple text which talks

about only one closed theme. This essay is a kind of a historical and social reflection, in

a way which makes us think about our role as human being in this large world house.

This reading makes us feel better humans, mainly if we are part of (or feel as such)

disinherited masses of intellectuality. In my opinion, King expresses the feeling of a

kind of freedom from societys ill of his time, and tries to rouse the same in his

readers.

REFERENCE:

DECKER, RANDALL E., Patterns of exposition. Alternate Ed.7. ed.BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY, 1969.

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