THoreas influence
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" (King). "Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail" (231). These words written by Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau show the ideas which embodied these individuals. Each man became a leader in their own right and changed history for the better. Martin Luther King and Henry David Thoreau each have secured a spot in history because of the influence of their writings and their actions. One of the most influential essays ever written can be claimed by Thoreau.The influence of Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government is well known. Thinkers such as Tolstoy, Gandhi, King, and also the British Labor movement were influenced by Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government. In it Thoreau calls into question the democratic values which our nation is founded on. Most notably he calls into the question of majority rule. Thoreau believed, like other transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the importance of the individual. He argues that when power is in the hands of the people majority rules.After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the peopl
I idea of civil disobedience is the most notable idea in Resistance to Civil Government and is biggest reason for the essay's influence. Thoreau argues:There is but little virtue in the action of the masses of men. (227)Thoreau feels that people belonging to a democracy are essentially machines controlled by the majority, who are unable to make choices for themselves. Bartleby does this simply by repeating, "I would prefer not to" (10) and by doing so practiced civil disobedience. At the end of Bartleby it is reveled that Bartleby was once employed as a subordinate clerk at the Dead Letter Office in Washington. Bartleby then becomes a scrivener where he continues to suffer from the oppression of the majority in form of Nippers, Turkey, Ginger and his boss. (231)Thoreau makes the comparison of the minority trying to participate in democracy to playing a game of chance. The majority's decision to elect a new president, affected Bartleby. "Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey then until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once" (233). "Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the church, commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended, but I myself.
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Acceptance Essays
