Reflection Blog: Civil Disobedience

I found "Civil Disobedience" very hard to understand. The aspect that government has on our society is very powerful, but yes, our conscience and our decisions have a lot of power too. I think that in this three part story, that Thoreau was trying to compare and contrast the effect of government and the effect of our own decisions. In the very beginning of the story, Thoreau starts out by explaining that government rarely presents itself as useful. That is a pretty moving statement. He believes that the accomplishments achieved in the past lied in the character of the people involved in them. He thinks that if government was involved even less than it was that these accomplishments would be a lot successful than they already were.

Upon finding a criticism, I learned some part of history that connects Henry Thoreau to his story and his opinions. Henry Thoreau was thrown in jail because he refused to pay a toll tax during the Mexican War. The Mexican War at this time was a perfect example of how the will of the people was not taken into consideration anymore.

The fact that Henry Thoreau thinks conscience comes first is a concept that I have never really thought about and its quite interesting. Henry's thoughts and ideas paved the way for civil rights that became increasingly important after he had died. It is interesting how someone thinks that a good solution is to avoid the American government and follow your conscience instead.

One of the main characteristics of the transcendentalist time period is the formation of revolutionary thoughts and ideas. Henry's thoughts, like I said earlier, became so popular later when civil rights came into play, and it gave a different outlook on government for future generations altogether. Another characteristic of the transcendentalism time period is personal intuition, or valuing feelings over reasons. In Thoreau's story, the "feelings" are represented by conscience and "reason" is represented by the government.

Henry Thoreau refers to the government as a machine in his story. At some point all machines wear out. He comes up with his own theories about government and how it works. Government controls us, but it is like a machine and we usually listen to it. That is why they are very few real men left, if any at all, who will listen to their conscience first and the law second. Even though I do not understand politics very well, I found the story very interesting. This one man had the ability to get people to listen to his ideas and they actually helped the future generations too. As for another transcendentalism characteristic, I think that Thoreau favors individual worth over that of society. We are all part of society, under one government. So basically he is saying that the conscience that we have will get us farther in the end than the government will because there are going to be times when the government fails us like it has before, and in his opinion repeatedly does.

Barney, Brett, and Lisa Paddock, eds. "'Civil Disobedience'."Encyclopedia of American Literature: The Age of Romanticism and Realism, 1816–1895, vol. 2, Revised Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008.Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EAmL0453&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 27, 2012).