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Letter From Birmingham Jail Pathos

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Both Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King both spend time in prison for not abiding by the law and practicing civil disobedience, although they are for very different causes. Henry David Thoreau wrote “Resistance to Civil Government” in 1849, he went to jail for not paying a tax that supported the Mexican-American War to expand American territories. He refused to pay this tax because he did not agree to expand American territories because the expansion would lead to more slavery, which he opposed. While Martin Luther King was arrested in 1863 for protesting the treatment of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. In jail, Dr. King experienced harsh conditions and more segregation than he did in Birmingham as a free man, so he wrote Letter From Birmingham Jail.” Dr. King and Thoreau had similar tactics …show more content…

Both Thoreau and King used the same strategies ethos (ethical), logos (logical), and pathos (emotional), but they used it in a very different way. King used pathos referring to him being arrested for not having a proper permit to protest, even though that’s guaranteed in his 1st amendment right, and he talked about his injustices in jail. While in contrast Thoreau explained that the government doesn’t do anything to keep the country free, such as in 1849 education wasn’t a guaranteed right, and slavery in the south was very popular, he does this by saying “It does not” a lot, referring to the government. For logos, Thoreau explained why he didn’t pay the tax because he believed the government gets nothing done on their own, and that the majority of Americans opposed the war, so why

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