Henry Thorau's Civil Disobedience By Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau starts to become dysfunctional with the government when he’s detained and spends a night in jail. He decides to write an essay titled “Civil Disobedience” where he criticizes the government for certain criteria and says which areas can be improved at. Thoreau’s areas of improvement are centered through the ideas of ethics and the relationship between the individual and the state. Thoreau wrote three parts in this essay; each part having the same agenda but in several of different explanations. In part one, paragraph one of his essay, he immediately talks about how the government is at its best when not governing itself and not involved with the people’s lives. Thoreau writes “a government is good when it doesn’t govern

He suggests that the government itself has reached prosperity by losing its integrity, causing the citizens to start losing faith and questioning their actions. The metaphor that Thoreau says involves a “wooden gun” that has the representation of the people going to war with it as their choice of weapon; in other words it’s useless. The parallel structure that Thoreau uses that suggests the necessity of a better government is describing the government in “not doing anything while the citizens are doing everything.” Paragraphs five and six introduces the idea of ethics for the first in part one of Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience.” He makes the distinction of which type of men serve the state and government by comparing machines serving with their bodies and minds while they’re better of using wooden men. The figurative language that Thoreau writes exemplifies is with the people that serve and worship that government don’t have any humanity or a conscience because they can’t make the decision between what is right and wrong both logically and

The area of improvements are centered through the ideas of the relationship between the individual and the government and ethics. There are multiple occurrences throughout the essay where these ideas are presented and how to make the government better overall. Even though times has change, there has been significant effects on the country where the government has done something positive or negative. Thoreau doesn’t want the government to be horrendous and become absolute dust; he just wants the government to take action for whatever necessity so it doesn’t come to a point where people start doubting