Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

“I Have Been to the Mountaintop” was one of King's most powerful speeches. It remains a noteworthy example of his rhetoric because it is structured around three major metaphors. The first, enunciated in the opening paragraphs, could be called the “sick nation” metaphor, for King shares his disgust with the disease of racism that has infected America. He cites numerous instances of this sickness, including not only the injustice of the conditions faced by Memphis's sanitation workers but also, for example, the racism he encountered in Birmingham, Alabama, at the hands of its infamous public safety commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor, who used fire hoses, attack dogs, and on one occasion even a tank to break up civil rights demonstrations.

The second major metaphor King uses is that of the Jericho Road. In the Bible, the Jericho Road is described as a winding road traveled by Christ from Jerusalem to the city of Jericho. It was a dangerous road, for travelers could easily be ambushed; indeed, people were often beaten and left for dead at the roadside. The Jericho Road was the setting for Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan, who stopped and rendered aid to a Jew who had been stripped, robbed, beaten, and left half dead—despite the fact that Jews and Samaritans (an ethno-religious group) generally hated each other. King uses the Jericho Road metaphor and the parable of the Good Samaritan as a way of urging his listeners to “make America what it ought to be.”

The third prominent metaphor is also biblical: Drawing on Moses, the exodus of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt (narrated in the biblical book of Exodus), and the Jewish quest for the Promised Land, King is able to point not just to the nation's problems but also to its potential for greatness. In the final paragraph of the speech, King employs soaring rhetoric to dismiss the threats against his life, saying that he does not care about them, for, like Moses, the leader of the Israelites, he has “been to the mountaintop” and seen the “promised land” on the other side—a promised land of racial equality and the end of prejudice and discrimination. He acknowledges, prophetically, that he himself may not arrive at the promised land, but he is sure that “we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” King concludes the speech by quoting the first line of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” made popular during the American Civil War: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”