What are the main points in Civil Disobedience?

In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau’s basic premise is that a higher law than civil law demands the obedience of the individual. Human law and government are subordinate. In cases where the two are at odds with one another, the individual must follow his conscience and, if necessary, disregard human law.

What is a major theme in Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience?

The main themes in “Civil Disobedience” are individual conscience and action, just and unjust laws, and democracy in the United States. Individual conscience and action: Thoreau emphasizes the importance of each citizen’s discernment in assessing the correct course of action.

What is Thoreau’s style in Civil Disobedience?

Thoreau’s vigorous style consists of his own idea of word flow in phrases like “more a tidal wave than a prone river.” His work “Civil Disobedience” makes waves skillfully, with opening passages that move his thesis from the need for little government to that “which governs not at all.” He proceeds to reason out man’s …

What is Thoreau’s purpose in writing Walden?

He states his purpose in going to Walden: to live deliberately, to confront the essentials, and to extract the meaning of life as it is, good or bad. He exhorts his readers to simplify, and points out our reluctance to alter the course of our lives.

What 3 things occur in civil disobedience?

1.2 Civility

  • 1 Communication. Typically, a person who commits an offense has no wish to communicate with her government or society.
  • 2 Publicity. On many accounts, civil disobedience must be not only communicative, but also public in a specific way.
  • 3 Non-violence.
  • 4 Non-evasion.
  • 5 Decorum.

What is the overall message of Thoreau’s solitude?

Thoreau is writing “Solitude” to persuade his audience that living alone in close communion with nature is good for the body, mind, and soul. Using simile, Thoreau compares his serenity to a lake’s calm surface and compares the friendliness he feels from Nature to an atmosphere that sustains him.

What strategies does Thoreau use?

Thoreau ‘s essay is particularly compelling because of its incorporation of rhetorical strategies, including the use of logos, ethos, pathos, purposive discourse, rhetorical competence and identification.

What rhetorical strategies does Thoreau use in Walden?

Although Thoreau was not so concerned to “infect the emotions” of his readers, much of the subtle but rhetorical balance of tone in Walden derives from his use of both exaggeration and litote-like irony.

What is the metaphor that Thoreau?

When Thoreau employs a metaphor that compares natural phenomena such as heat to social phenomena, he typically likens the first to the excesses of economic overproduction that causes individuals to waste away their lives in frustration.

Why is salt chosen as a theme?

Salt was chosen to symbolize the start of civil disobedience movement because salt was deemed as something on which each Indian had the basic right. Mahatma Gandhi declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme for the civil disobedience movement and thus started Dandi March.

Why civil disobedience is morally justified?

To claim a right to civil disobedience is to claim that others have a duty to allow the agent to commit the act. Nonetheless it is justifiable to violate an immoral law (and even a moral law provided one is unable to violate the immoral law~ but would have been justified in doing so.)