Civil Disobedience
1)a) Civil Disobedience is Henry Thoreau's way of talking about the problems with government. He begins it with saying the best government is a government that is rarely involved, but then states right after, that a government that isn't involved is a better one. He believes governments are worthless because they cause more troubles to the citizens then they do help. To stand up and stop this faulty government we have to refuse to pay for it and its good, even if the consequences are jail. If we don't support the government with our money they won't be able to "support" us.
b) There is a day where men will be able to live peacefully by ruling themselves and not each other.
2) I believe Thoreau choose to write about corrupt government because he always disliked how corrupted society's governments had been over the years, and he believed he knew a way to surpass this corruption and bring internal peace to the people.
3) I choose to read this after reading "Into the Wild" because Chris read Thoreau among other artist and I believed Chris was an extremely wise man for his age, therefore I thought I would start reading books from authors he liked. After I began reading I couldn't stop because Thoreau's ideas made so appealed to my sense so much, I understood what he was saying.
4) I think this book was as realistic as it could get. He was a well known author and was calling out the faults and corruption in our governments. He uses the war between Mexico and America for some of his points on how the government puts the people in situations they don't want to be in. I think that is still true today, since World War II, every war we have been in hasn't been supported by the general populous. This faltering support is shown in the statistic, even though we have had the biggest military budget we haven't won a war since then because the people we attack are supported by their people.
PEOPLE
1) There isn't character in Civic Disobedience, only a narrator. Thoreau is the narrator and we only really learn about he thinks, nothing else. He wants to see true freedom in the world, where no one controls each other, but each person controls himself or herself. Through out the scripture we see him set a tone of frustration with the government.
STYLE
1) Thoreau wrote this more as an essay, so it doesn't use tools from fiction writing, but it does use the stream of conscious approach found in the Montaigne's essays.
2) Thoreau uses action to express his thoughts and beliefs in the essay. This makes the point come across more clear because there is less fluff and crap to fill space.
3) Thoreau references mistakes made by the government to show the tone of frustration in his writing.
4) Thoreau was very persuasive towards the readers because he wants us to side with him and fall to his beliefs of a faulty and corrupt government. He was infuriated towards the government and that is why he wrote about to them in this essay.
5) There were no other resources beside Thoreau in the essay, but I think his writing style appeals to the rebellion in everyone and keeps you reading.
ENDURING MEMORY
like his idea of living free. I have no interest in paying the government so they can pay for other peoples needs because I have trouble paying for my own needs. People expect to much to be provided for them instead of providing for themselves. I think it is very easy and possible to live with only the things you can pack on your back and a little money in the bank. I could go and travel the world for almost no money. There are people who let you work on their farms for a bed and food, or people who will let you travel with them so they have company, and even people who open their homes to strangers. You can live free of the government and other restrictions, you just have to be able to let go of the pleasures from intangible items and technology and find the pleasure in truly living. Even though this quote isn't from this exact essay, I feel like it goes well with the meaning I pulled from this essay, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” -Henry David Thoreau I believe it means that people go through the motions in life never grabbing what they want deep down and it haunts them all they way to the grave, where they die with a untold story of an adventure they never experienced.
No comments:
Post a Comment