Comparison Of Civil Disobedience And Letter From Birmingham Jail

In his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau asserts that the government is not needed and must be disobeyed for the sake of the people. Over a hundred years later after Thoreau published his essay, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” similarly shows the need for the disobeyment of the government. Thoreau asserts that governments are not necessary, and must be dissolved. While King follows a similar ideal, he believes that the government is inherently good, but that some of the laws passed by the government are cruel to people. While they are both appealing emotionally and ethically, King’s is more sound in argument and portrays a more practical way of civil disobedience. The practical application of King’s argument

Thoreau’s emotional appeal, while not nonexistent, is relatively small. Thoreau was “put in jail once on [the account of paying no taxes], for one night.” Thoreau displays a distaste for all things government since no “man with a genius for legislation has appeared.” Thoreau is trying to further his appeal by making his ideas more relatable to the common man, that may face oppression. King, on the other hand, faces oppression directly, and addresses it as so. King states that “[he] knows through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor.” This takes into account the struggles he himself has faced as an African-American male in the south. Both however, illustrate a need for self-reliance and direction action. Thoreau says that we must “let [our lives] be a counter-friction to stop the machine.” Similarly King states that he had no other alternative “except to prepare for direct action. While they both speak of direct action, King justifies direct action by the tension it produces. King claims that tension builds upon a crises enough to where it needs to be dissolved or talked about. While King and Thoreau have similar views on the emotional side of civil disobedience, King displays more of a need for his civil