Comparing Thoreau's Letter Of Civil Disobedience And Martin Luther King

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Thoreau’s letter of civil disobedience and Martin Luther King’s letter from jail were on some aspects two different things and looked to serve two different purposes when you look at the letters themselves and the stories or backgrounds behind each of them. An example being that Thoreau’s letter seems more geared towards trying to put down or frown upon the government in his writings as many times throughout his writing this is illustrated and reinforced. You can find many examples all throughout this writing. Here is one from the first bit of what he tells us. Note that all quotes will be italicized. Please note that I had to do a little bit of background research to get some more information about this topic. “Men will someday be able to …show more content…
The purpose for kings letter was much different than that of Civil Disobedience. During his eight days in jail, he wrote the letter as a response to a letter that had also been written recently regarding the protests calling them, “unwise and untimely”. However, King’s letter was more towards targeting the national audience rather than just locally. All summed up it basically just tried to justify the need for nonviolent actions to take place, rather than resorting to fighting which led to bloodshed and disorder all throughout. Just trying to convince people not to respond to all of this with violence and keep their peace. The letter also helped to kind of outline and bring out his objectives for his movement. After he was released from jail, the protests had gone from local to a national level and had been much larger than ever anticipated. In the end when looking over both of the letters they are two kind of different things even though they sort of have a similar format. Civil Disobedience is more around the government and all of its faults if you will, while Letter from Birmingham Jail is more so about the people and trying to stop any violence that has been caused by them, and to resolve all of this in a peaceful manner. Note, I had to do some extra digging on the topics at hand to get a better understanding behind the purpose and reasoning for
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