"Civil Disobedience" is one of Henry David Thoreau's most famous essays. One of the major problems most critics see with this essay deals with Thoreau's seemingly contradictory statements about society from the beginning to the end. Barry Wood, a well-known critical writer, attributes this change in beliefs to the enlightenment of Thoreau in jail. While I agree with Wood that Thoreau does achieve a form of enlightenment, I will show that Thoreau's views regarding the society he lived in never actually changed throughout the essay: the only aspect of the essay that changed was Thoreau's means of attacking his society. Thoreau uses his enlightened state to shift from an overt, blatant form of attack to a more subtle, psychological one.
There are many issues in this essay that Thoreau expresses conflicting views on, such as the government's role in society, but his main focus lays in the members of the society themselves and how they cause most of the problems. Thoreau adopts a very authoritative tone in the beginning of the essay, showing his readers how they "serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies" (Thoreau 228). He implies that this "mass of men" uses men's bodies and not their consciences, which is the reason they do not "resist [the government]" like their revolutionary counterparts (Thoreau 228). This group is Thoreau's target audience, for it is this majority group that currently supports the government and the problems of society.
Thoreau grabs the reader's attention by comparing these "citizens" with "wood and earth and stones", inanimate objects not worthy of the titl...
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...esistance to Civil Disobedience", Thoreau gives off the impression of changing his views and contradicting his beliefs about the people of society. However, through this analysis I have shown that while his beliefs on society did not change, the ways in which he attacked this society did. In making his beliefs less overt, he actually captured more of society's attention and made this essay one of the most controversial of his time. Had he not changed his tactics, who knows if this essay would have been as influential.
Works Cited
Thoreau, Henry David. "Resistance to Civil Government". 1849
Wood, Barry. "Thoreau's Narrative Art in Civil Disobedience'". A Norton Critical
Edition. 2nd Ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Thoreau talks about the politics, power and civil disobedience in his works. He believed that when many thought alike, the power was stronger within that minority. I think that Thoreau's intention was to point out that those people who dare to go against what seems to be unjust and go against the majority, and stand erect, are the people who transform society as a whole.
History has encountered many different individuals whom have each impacted the 21 in one way or another; two important men whom have revolted against the government in order to achieve justice are Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. Both men impacted numerous individuals with their powerful words, their words carried the ability to inspire both men and women to do right by their morality and not follow unjust laws. “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” by David Henry Thoreau along with King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, allow the audience to understand what it means to protest for what is moral.
In 1848, David Thoreau addressed and lectured civil disobedience to the Concord Lyceum in response to his jail time related to his protest of slavery and the Mexican War. In his lecture, Thoreau expresses in the beginning “That government is best which governs least,” which sets the topic for the rest of the lecture, and is arguably the overall theme of his speech. He chastises American institutions and policies, attempting to expand his views to others. In addition, he advances his views to his audience by way of urgency, analyzing the misdeeds of the government while stressing the time-critical importance of civil disobedience. Thoreau addresses civil disobedience to apprise the people the need for a civil protest to the unjust laws created
Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience took the original idea of transcendentalism and put it into action. His civil acts of defiance were revolutionary as he endorsed a form of protest that did not incorporate violence or fear. Thoreau’s initial actions involving the protest of many governmental issues, including slavery, landed him in jail as he refused to pay taxes or to run away. Ironically, more than one hundred years later, the same issue of equal rights was tearing the United States apart. Yet African Americans, like Martin Luther King Jr., followed in Thoreau’s footsteps by partaking in acts of civil disobedience. Sit-ins and peaceful rallies drew attention to the issue while keeping it from escalating into a much more violent problem. Thoreau’s ideas were becoming prevalent as they were used by Civil Rights Activists and the Supreme Court, in such cases as Brown v. Board of Education. The ideology that was created by Thoreau aided the activists and the government in their quest for equality and a more just system of law.
Jacobus, Lee A. Henry David Thoreau. "Civil Disobedience." A World Of Ideas: essential readings for college writers. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002. 141-167
“On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” is evocative of some of the most famous writings of the Revolutionary Era. In comparison to “The Declaration of Independence”, both works include the three elements of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle: logos, ethos, and pathos. When employed tactfully, the combination of these three components can create a very compelling argument. Thoreau’s essay elicits the idea that it is our civic duty and moral obligation to revolt when great injustices- slavery being the injustice he chose to write about- are occurring amongst us. By including factual evidence, referencing authority figures such as George Washington and
First, the problem needs to be defined as Thoreau sees it. And he sees this problem in Concord, the city in which he lives, as such a threat to his very survival and mental well being that he actually leaves this town to go live in semi-seclusion. The problems he observes within the town and people around him are actually numerous and yet all-encompassing. He observes some character traits inherent in the people of Concord as flawed and leading to the deconstruction of their humanity. These traits include desperation, materialism, commercialism, industriousness, and insincerity.
The difference between a rock and a human truly just comes down to a few different variations of carbon molecules. Yet this straightforward science ignores why humans, in all of their complexity, stem from such a random happenstance. Only knowing this science of life has not necessarily led to understanding its meaning. For that answer, famed transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau look within the self, rather than in a laboratory. In his essay, Self-Reliance, Emerson hypothesizes the meaning to be in independence; whereas, Thoreau, from his nature experience in Walden, theorizes it to be in simplicity. At the least, Thoreau finds it in a life without an intrusive government, which is the reason he pens Civil Disobedience.
...eeds to be challenged and according to the writer, the only way of achieving this is through the potential of the discontent. The complaints go against order and have the possibility of organizing and changing traditions. If he targeted the conformed, the efforts will result unsuccessful because changing the mind is harder that structuring an argument. The conformed have no potential to challenge order and changing their mind proves harder than organizing the minority. Thoreau’s philosophy of achieving change through the potential of the minority thus translates to his choice of audience.
In Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," he uses a hyperbole to support his belief that "one person can make a change," an idea still relevant today. Thoreau uses many forms of literary techniques such as multiple hyperbole, emotional appeals, and paradoxes. Thoreau uses these to sustain his ideas on civil disobedience. He believes if you believe in something, and support something you should do whatever it takes to help the cause. Many people in today's society believe to just go with the flow, rather than living like Thoreau has, and supporting his own beliefs no matter what the consequence. Henry David Thoreau had a lot of personal authority, he was all about his own independence. Many different people believed in being a non-conformist, and Thoreau was one of them, and he very well showed how much he supported it. Thoreau was not the only nonconformist, they're many people who followed his beliefs and they refused to be bound by anybody, or anything they did not support. Other non-conformists were Gandhi, Galileo, Malcom X and many more.
Pathos is prevalent throughout Thoreau’s essay. He uses pathos in an attempt to persuade his readers into making a logical and ethical choice. The essay as a whole is an attempt to anger the reader into taking action against what Thoreau sees as an unjust government. When he refers to “the mass of men” who are in service to the country, the soldiers, as being the “same worth only as horse and dogs” and of serving “the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines...
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a philosopher and writer who is well known for his criticism of the American government during the time. During Thoreau’s life, there were two major issues being debated in the United States: slavery and the Mexican-American War. Both issues greatly influenced his essay, as he actually practiced civil disobedience in his own life by refusing to pay taxes in protest of the Mexican War. He states that the government should be based on conscience and that citizens should refuse to follow the law and has the duty not to participate and stay as a member of an unjust institution like the government. I argue that the notion of individualism and skepticism toward government is essential in the basis of many important reform movements in the modern society.
Thoreau regards civil disobedience as duty of his fellow countrymen in order for them to be moral, upstanding Americans. Particularly in the...
Martin Luther King and Henry David Thoreau each write exemplary persuasive essays that depict social injustice and discuss civil disobedience, which is the refusal to comply with the law in order to prove a point. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King speaks to a specific audience: the African Americans, and discusses why he feels they should bring an end to segregation. Thoreau on the other hand, in “Civil Disobedience,” speaks to a broader, non-addressed audience as he largely expresses his feelings towards what he feels is an unjust government. Both essays however, focus on the mutual topics of morality and justice and use these topics to inform and motivate their audience to, at times, defy the government in order to establish the necessary justice.
The first paragraph expresses Thoreau's seemingly libertarian political sentiments the idea that the most ideal form of government is one which exercises the least power and control over its citizens. He envisions a society in which government is eliminated altogether because men have the capacity to be self-regulating and independent. Which he also has a theoretical endpoint of the way societies develop and evolve. There's a tension between Thoreau's desire to limit the power