A number of social as well as historical conditions provoked Thoreau’s thought and resulting essay on the subject of civil disobedience. One of the factors that influenced Thoreau to consider civil disobedience as a method of resistance was the poor treatment of Mexico by the United States. In  “Civil Disobedience”  Thoreau is also disturbed by the way that the United States fails to take care of vulnerable people and why it embraces Christian ideals of sacrifice but “excommunicates Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce[s] Washington and Franklin rebels” (  ). Still more alarming to Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience” Thoreau, however, was the institution of slavery in the South; Thoreau declared in one of the important quotes from “Civil Disobedience” “I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also” ( ). In fact, the practice of slavery in the United States is the single most hypocritical aspect of the government as far as Thoreau is concerned. He remarks  in one of these particularly succinct quotes from “Civil Disobedience”: “[W]hen a sixth of the population…has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves… I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize” ( ). Thoreau considers civil disobedience a moral and social duty of American citizens. He defines civil disobedience as an act of willful resistance, achieved by not obeying laws he considers to be hypocritical. One act of civil disobedience may be not paying taxes. Another act, and one he deems more important still, is to avoid colluding with the government by refusing to play an active role in it. It is important to point out, though, that civil disobedience is, as its name suggests, peaceful. It does not involve taking up arms or using any other methods of violence to achieve its ends.

Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience is a seminal work in the American literary canon, and it is clear that his treatise on concentrated, thoughtful resistance has been influential in subsequent social and political movements which themselves have been recorded by writers. One of the movements that was marked by its insistence on civil disobedience is the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The man who was considered the leader of this movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated the kind of peaceful but assertive resistance defined by Thoreau as civil disobedience. Dr. King’s strategy for political change was to plan, facilitate, and implement as many acts of resistance as possible while avoiding violence at all costs. Even more than Thoreau, it seems, King wanted the actions of civil rights activists to provoke thought, critical evaluation of the government and of society at large, and a radical change in government’s and society’s processes and treatment of marginalized minorities. While Thoreau seems to have been more of an individualist in his essay “Civil Disobedience”, calling upon each citizen who felt so compelled to determine and implement his own act of resistance, which need not necessarily be coordinated with someone else, King mastered the power of civil disobedience by creating a critical mass of individuals to band together as a show of solidarity. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King  addresses those individuals who criticize him for such a strategy, and what makes this letter so effective and powerful is that his audience, the people he is trying to convince, are eight ministers who criticized Martin Luther Kingfor bringing his movement to Alabama.

King intuits how significant it is that he lacks the support of his fellow clergymen, and he pens this letter in response, saying that he has come to Alabama because “injustice is here” and he considers injustice to be a threat to all people, irrespective of geographical, racial, or other artificially constructed demographic categories that divide people. King effectively traces his notions about civil disobedience all the way back to the Bible, an effective persuasive strategy because it appeals to what the eight clergymen know. He crystallizes his own definition of civil disobedience by explaining the four steps that comprise it in one of the important quotes from “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: “collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self- purification; and direct action” (  ). In this way, the reader sees that King has built upon Thoreau’s conceptualization of civil disobedience as a process of becoming right with oneself through an examination of conscience and values and then following up with action. The desired outcome of civil disobedience, King writes, is “to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored” (  ). He, perhaps more than any other individual, understood the power of civil disobedience and wielded it effectively.

Other figures from the civil rights era engaged in civil disobedience as well, though their acts are, perhaps, more subtle. The poet Amiri Baraka, for instance, used his poems as a tool of active, non-violent resistance. While Baraka was considered to be politically radical, his poetry constituted an act of civil disobedience, as it called for attention to be directed to the plight of African Americans, just as Thoreau did more than a century earlier. In his poems “An Agony.As Now” and “A Poem for Willie Best,” among others, Baraka’s voice urges social change. “Give me / Something more / Than what is here,” he says in “A Poem for Willie Best.” Might the “renegade / behind the mask” in this same poem be Baraka behind, or within, his own poem? While there are images of violence in the poem, Baraka does not seem to advocate violence; rather, the discharge of strong emotion through poetry becomes his act of resistance, and one in which the reader can share.

Personally, there are definitely principles for which I would consider civil disobedience, although I would want, like King and the civil rights movement activists, to practice this form of resistance not just individually, but in community. I could see myself engaging in civil disobedience in an effort to bring greater attention to serious social problems that cause great debate: the persistence and pervasiveness of poverty and the war are two problems that come to mind immediately. In my opinion, however, I see less of an enthusiasm for civil disobedience today than in this readings from the past, which causes me to wonder whether civil disobedience remains effective as an instrument for social and political change. There are some contemporary examples of civil disobedience that are incredibly inspiring, including the actions of Cindy Sheehan in her one-woman protests against the War in Iraq, but I do not see the kind of widespread support for civil disobedience that there was at one time in this country’s history.

Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Narrative, Rhetoric, and Civil Disobedience  in the Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.  • Transcendentalism and the Poetry of Walt Whitman  • Persistent Themes in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats  •  Summary and Analysis of the Poem “Departmental” by Robert Frost  •  Poem Analysis of “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford  •  Romanticism in Poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge •   An Analysis of Common Themes in Victorian Poetry

Works Cited

Baraka, Amiri. “A Poem for Willie Best.” In The Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Shorter 6th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

King, Martin Luther. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In The Norton Anthology of American

Literature. Shorter 6th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” In The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 6th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

The speaker of the poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas seems to think it is not honorable or befitting for a great or interesting man to die quietly in old age and he encourages the reader to think that death is something that should be fought rather than mutely accepted. Interestingly, this poem can be divided into three parts, the first of which acts as an introduction to the speaker’s message. This is followed by four stanzas that offer examples of what he is expressing followed by the last stanza, the third part, in which the tone becomes far more personal as the speaker talks about his father. In many ways, one could read this poem and provide the suggestion in an analysis of “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” saying it is as a statement about living a strong life and refusing to go down quietly just as easily as it can be read as a poem about death and the process of dying or aging.

When the speaker of “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas states in the second line of the first stanza, “Old age should burn and rave at the close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of that light” he is expressing the idea that moving toward death should not be something we do in a resigned way, but rather that we should fight it and go out in a blaze of glory. When he says, “rage, rage against the dying of the light” it is clear that the dying light is means darkness, which is a metaphor for death and that in old age, we should “burn” with life, which brings to mind images of brightness, light, and life. This first stanza almost acts as something of a thesis statement for the rest of the poem since it clearly defines and outlines the speaker’s beliefs about aging and death.

The second stanza of them poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas is a departure from the first as it is less broad. At the beginning of this stanza the speaker states, “Though wise men at their end know dark is right” he is telling us that a wise man (presumably an old man) knows that death is approaching and that it should be accepted as a fact. He follows that statement up with, “because their words had forked no lightning they / do not go gentle into that good night” which expresses the speaker’s sentiment that they have a lived a long life but are now powerless, even if words were once their greatest ally. This desire to be known, heard, and understood means that they are likely to fight death, perhaps because they feel there is yet more to do. These ideas are echoed in the next two stanzas as the speaker discusses “good men” who cry “how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay” as well as “Grave men, near death who see with blinding sight / Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” and how men who lived such full lives still rage against the “dying light” because they see their lives could have been more. Even men who were once wild such as those referred to in the third stanza realize too late the meaning of their lives and as a result should not fade away. The speaker encourages men such as these to rage against death simply because they are too special in one way or another to go gently into the “night” of death, which is the meaning of “Do Not Go Gentle”.

The poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas becomes intensely personal in the last stanza as the author recalls his father and tells him, “curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray” which means that he wants his father to burn with feeling and emotion while he still can, even if he curses his son—so long as he does not die with putting up a fight. While the poem addresses many types of men, the fact that it ends with his father shows that the speaker thinks of his father not as the grave, wild, or good men discussed previously, but that he is a category by himself. The fact that the speaker is not concerned with whether or not his father curses or blesses him shows that he is not necessarily concerned with what his father had to say, but only that he did not fade quietly into death.

Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Analytical Essay on the Poem “Air and Angels” by John Donne •  Summary and Analysis of the Poem “Departmental” by Robert Frost  •   Poem Analysis of “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford  •     Analysis of the Poem “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath   •  Persistent Themes in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats

There are several themes that are common throughout the poems of William Butler Yeats. Many of poems by W.B. Yeats reflect an unrelenting obsession with the past—both the distant past and that of his personal life—and these fixations are symbolic of his fear of growing old or aging and a persistent fear of death. There were many things W.B. Yeats wanted to accomplish, one of which was gaining the hand of his long-time love Maud Gonne. Images of her, both as she appeared to him in his memory and as expressed by allusions are frequent throughout Yeats’ poetry as are his numerous references to the grim process of aging and preparing for death. For Yeats, death or even aging alone was not the romantic end or dramatic solution—it was an organic process that caused a man to become hollow and scarecrow-like.

Along with this thesis statement expressed here on the similarities in themes in the poems by W.B. Yeats and their fixation on death and aging, it should also be noted that many of the poems by Yeats induce an image of an aged man as such a scarecrow or as a man in tatters with little left of any substance. Such a man is only able to stagnate in one position and can only look backward since moving forward is no longer a possibility. Although this is a rather bleak image, it is highly representative of the many struggles W.B. Yeats endured in as a young man, a frustrated suitor, a political pioneer, and finally, an aged poet—a sage. Although traces of these themes are recurrent in several poems by William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Among Schoolchildren,” and “The Circus Animal’s Desertion” portray these complex themes most completely.

One of the most stunning poems reflecting implicit fear of aging in poems by William Butler Yeats occurs throughout “Sailing to Byzantium.” This poem was written in 1926 as W.B. Yeats was growing older and beginning to realize the meaning and consequences of old age. “Sailing to Byzantium” reflects the speaker’s desire to return to an older age far from the youthful excesses and their inability to recognize age and wisdom. One of the important quotes from “Sailing to Byzantium” is at the beginning and says, “that is no country for old men. The young / in one another’s arms, birds in the trees—those dying generations” which discusses the reason for the speaker’s journey. He no longer feels he has a place among the youthful exuberance and seeks something more fulfilling and ancient. Although the young represented in the poem by William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” are “those dying generations” they are nonetheless too engaged with their trivialities to understand the pursuits of an old man who feels he is condemned to live in an aging body, or “fastened to a dying animal” while his soul yearns to be free.