Civil Disobedience Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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In “Civil Disobedience” David Thoreau reveals many interesting points of views on subject matters that relate to the idea of the government ruling over the people. David Thoreau’s ideas were so well received with the public that they are still used in modern society as the use of helping the minority achieve goals that might otherwise not be achievable. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. used David Thoreau’s ideas to help gather large groups of people to do exactly what “civil disobedience” means to do. A civil and peaceful way of not following the laws that are in place. This idea of one honest man standing up to the government can change the government is one of Thoreau’s main ideas in his passage of “Civil Disobedience”. Thoreau shows this …show more content…
But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission.” Thoreau refers to the ideal that one honest man has the power to change the government through peaceful and honest means. Thoreau’s issue with the government is the fact that the large majority has all the power to do what ever pleases them no mater the consequences. However, a man who is honest and wishes to change the government which allows the majority to rule over the minority has many great sacrifices a head of them for any actual change to happen. Thoreau expands on the idea that any honest man can change the government by saying any man can change any kind of unjust system by simply refusing to going along with the unjust system, and be willing to make great sacrifices for the eventual better good. Thoreau discusses this idea through out his speech, “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight”. This idea that the minority population has the power to change any kind of unjust form of a system that is in place by simply not following the rules that the majority has set in place is one Thoreau’s main
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