Elementally, Shmoopers. Elementally.

Like mountains, fire and water are archetypes, which means they've been used as symbols more or less forever. And as archetypes, the figurative meanings of fire and water are pretty well established.

Fire is usually strong emotion, especially desire and determination; it can also be illumination (knowledge/wisdom), purity, and domesticity, as in "hearth and home." Water is also associated with purity, as well as life (because living things need it, natch) and adaptability—as in, going with the flow. Taking whatever is thrown at you. Or in you. Even if it's a bunch of junk.

Proud Martin: Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' Like a River

Now that we've got a handle on fire and water, let's see how Dr. K puts these old chestnuts to use. He pulls a couple relevant passages from the Bible:

Somewhere the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones, and whenever injustice is around he must tell it. […] Again with Amos, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." (20.4, 6)

This passage links both fire and water to God's justice. We emphasize that not because we love italics, although we totally love italics, but because this association is key to understanding the speech's big fire-and-water moment. Brace yourself—here it comes:

Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the trans-physics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses. We had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist or some others, we had been sprinkled. But we knew water. That couldn't stop us. (17.8–17)

(If you're not sure what's going on here, flow on over to "Birmingham campaign" in the Glossary.)

MLK isn't actually talking about physics and history in the academic sense. What he means here is physical force vs. moral force—conviction, willpower, that sort of thing. Bull Connor's fireman cronies sprayed the Birmingham protestors with fire hoses in an effort to end their marching. They tried to shut them down with physical force.

He failed.

The reason is that, as MLK says, there's more to life than just physical force. There's also history—the tradition of American racism, African Americans' determination to overcome it, and the inevitability of their victory: "we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land" (45.10).

Now, we hate to break this to you, but you don't get to the Promised Land unless God likes you. God also likes justice, and since the Birmingham marchers wanted justice, they believed they were doing "God's will" (45.6). That's what had them fired up, so to speak: like the preacher with "fire shut up in his bones," they were filled with spiritual fire, a feeling of courage and determination that regular old water, even at fire-hose pressure, couldn't extinguish.

Put Your Hose Down, Flip It, and Reverse It

In fact, and this is where it gets really slick MLK switches it around so that the spiritual fire extinguishes the water. "Say what? That's like scissors cutting rock!" You bet it is. This is the "trans-physics" Dr. K mentions, which means "a set of laws that overrule the laws of physics." What set of laws could that be? God's laws. It was the marchers' righteousness, suggests Dr. K, that gave them the power of trans-physics.

And this trans-physics reverses the expected water-extinguishes-fire rule. Instead of the fire hoses extinguishing the spiritual fire, the spiritual fire turns the hose water into spiritual water—namely, baptismal water.

That's what MLK's referring to when he talks about being "sprinkled" or "immersed." The SCLC worked through churches, so many of the Birmingham marchers would have been baptized at some point. Getting baptized again—even by fire hose—is actually a good thing. Like regular baptism, the hose-baptism is an outward symbol of the fact that the marchers are already baptized with spiritual fire by doing God's will.

Water as a symbol of fire? Religious iconography is topsy-turvy that way.

So, in the physical realm, fire and water are kind of opposites. But in the spiritual realm, they're not opposites at all: both are links to God and symbols of his justice. God wins, Bull loses.