Blog 4

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Kiley Gomez

Mr. Hopper

English 105

19 September 2020

The Comparison Between Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau

    There are great similarities between Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau. MLK wrote Letters From Birmingham Jail in an extremely similar way as Henry David Thoreau wrote "Civil Disobedience." Both authors believed that one's own conscience should and will tell one the difference between right and wrong, including if one should follow certain laws or rules. Both have a reoccurring idea that conscience drives a person and you can find the rhetorical device of ethos in both MLK and Henry David Thoreau's works.

    I definitely would agree that Martin Luther King Jr. had read "Civil Disobedience" as an important document regarding morality and immorality. Henry David Thoreau stated that men should act from their conscience and deemed it one's civil responsibility to disobey a law if his or her conscience deemed it fit. Similar to Henry David Thoreau, King sites conscience as a guide to obeying just laws and defying unjust laws. While they the two have similar ideals, their perspectives in life were drastically different. King was a black man and a leader during the Civil rights movement, fighting against the unjust laws directed towards people of color and fighting for equality. On the other hand, Henry David Thoreau was a white man refusing to pay taxes to a government that allows slavery. Thoreau had the position of a man fighting for slavery to be abolished, trying to help the underdog while Martin Luther King Jr. took the position of a man trying to fight for his life and for all other with the same or similar skin color. Both men were heroes and deserve the highest recognition.

    



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