Exploring Civil Disobedience: Sophocles and King Jr.

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Civil Disobedience and the Real Meaning of Justice Through Sophocles’ Antigone and Dr. Martin L. King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham jail” the aspects of civil disobedience and social mediocracy are expose, showing how the world acts through those who eyes can see the truth. Sophocles uses a distant world to represent the pressure of those who want to speak up and through a kingdom of the desperate he illustrates how actions can be depicted as wrong, but with them the truth lies overall. King’s letter is very similar to the story in the way which promises are made but actions unseen, and those who want to fight without a blood battle, at the end, are just consider faceless citizens against those who have the power …show more content…

While Antigone’s acts can be seen as “disobedience”, when can an act be seen as justified? Antigone’s values are brought up in the first pages, and as she chooses her path, her conscious also knows that by doing this she will be “guilty of the holiest crime” (Antigone 82). The author also compares the stands between Ismene and her sister, as Ismene sees women as too weak to disobey the laws of the king and “[she] plead[s] compulsion and entreat the dead to pardon”(Antigone 107) in order to convince Antigone that women had neither strength nor voice in society. Thus, even knowing all this, Antigone disobeyed the king’s decree and it is seen burying her brother, even confronting the divine …show more content…

[she does not] deny it, [she] admit[s] the deed was [hers]” (Antigone 443) and calls on the higher forces saying that neither did God writes men’s laws. Antigone accepts the death penalty since the beginning, which shoes her willingness in the act, and furthermore the main key in civil disobedience. Although she shows some regret at the end, not of the action itself but of dying without being married or having a legacy, she profoundly demonstrates that her love for Polyenises it’s greater than any women desire to live or have a

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