Civil Disobedience

7 Pages 1808 Words

ntained in Thoreau’s response to John Brown.” In comparing Thoreau’s John Brown pieces to his earlier “Civil Disobedience”, Leon Edel concludes, “His defense of John Brown, with his espousal of violence, is hardly the voice of the same man…Thoreau’s involvement in his cause has in it strong elements of hysteria.” I think it’s important to realize that Thoreau was horrified and impassioned by the plight of John Brown and certainly the idea of slavery on a broader scale, and this feeling was obvious in his “Plea for John Brown.” Probably most telling to Thoreau’s change in narrative voice in these two pieces was Thoreau’s anticipation that Brown would be labeled as pathological by a government staunchly opposed to change.
Certainly, in examining “Civil Disobedience”, it is not simply a question of whether or not a modern day Thoreau would have obeyed traffic signs. On a larger scale, Thoreau was a firm believer in autonomy, professing individual defiance of unjust laws, and a stubborn resistance to government intrusion into society. Is it not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right? Thoreau wasn’t opposed to societal laws in general, but in those that rendered the individu...