Hills and Mountains Symbol Analysis

Throughout “I Have a Dream,” King uses imagery of hills and mountains to invoke the future of the civil rights movement. Just as climbing a mountain requires enduring pain and difficulty in order to reach a glorious summit, King knows that civil rights activists will face tremendous obstacles (physical beatings, demoralizing insults, and even incarceration or death) on their way to achieving their goal of freedom, justice, and equality for all. But King’s imagery of mountains both acknowledges this difficulty and emphasizes that the end result will be worthwhile—after all, his language surrounding mountains is overwhelmingly positive, calling them “mighty” and “prodigious” and referring, in another context, to “majestic heights.”

King uses most of his mountain imagery towards the end of the speech while invoking the patriotic hymn “America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee).” That song includes the line “From every mountainside, let freedom ring,” and King calls for Americans to be able to sing those words wholeheartedly, knowing that freedom really is a reality for everyone. In driving home this message, he specifically invokes different American terrains, saying to “let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire” to the “heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania” to the “snow-capped Rockies” and even to “every hill and molehill of Mississippi.” By invoking the gorgeous terrain of America (just as the song does), King aligns his movement with patriotism, suggesting that the full beauty of America will be realized only once the movement’s goals are met. And finally, the notion that freedom will ring from the tops of mountains across America emphasizes that once the movement has struggled and reached the summit, they will have the power to make their ideas a reality.