A number of social as well as historical conditions provoked Thoreau’s thought and resulting essay on the subject of civil disobedience. One of the factors that influenced Thoreau to consider civil disobedience as a method of resistance was the poor treatment of Mexico by the United States. In  “Civil Disobedience”  Thoreau is also disturbed by the way that the United States fails to take care of vulnerable people and why it embraces Christian ideals of sacrifice but “excommunicates Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce[s] Washington and Franklin rebels” (  ). Still more alarming to Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience” Thoreau, however, was the institution of slavery in the South; Thoreau declared in one of the important quotes from “Civil Disobedience” “I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also” ( ). In fact, the practice of slavery in the United States is the single most hypocritical aspect of the government as far as Thoreau is concerned. He remarks  in one of these particularly succinct quotes from “Civil Disobedience”: “[W]hen a sixth of the population…has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves… I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize” ( ). Thoreau considers civil disobedience a moral and social duty of American citizens. He defines civil disobedience as an act of willful resistance, achieved by not obeying laws he considers to be hypocritical. One act of civil disobedience may be not paying taxes. Another act, and one he deems more important still, is to avoid colluding with the government by refusing to play an active role in it. It is important to point out, though, that civil disobedience is, as its name suggests, peaceful. It does not involve taking up arms or using any other methods of violence to achieve its ends.

Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience is a seminal work in the American literary canon, and it is clear that his treatise on concentrated, thoughtful resistance has been influential in subsequent social and political movements which themselves have been recorded by writers. One of the movements that was marked by its insistence on civil disobedience is the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The man who was considered the leader of this movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated the kind of peaceful but assertive resistance defined by Thoreau as civil disobedience. Dr. King’s strategy for political change was to plan, facilitate, and implement as many acts of resistance as possible while avoiding violence at all costs. Even more than Thoreau, it seems, King wanted the actions of civil rights activists to provoke thought, critical evaluation of the government and of society at large, and a radical change in government’s and society’s processes and treatment of marginalized minorities. While Thoreau seems to have been more of an individualist in his essay “Civil Disobedience”, calling upon each citizen who felt so compelled to determine and implement his own act of resistance, which need not necessarily be coordinated with someone else, King mastered the power of civil disobedience by creating a critical mass of individuals to band together as a show of solidarity. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King  addresses those individuals who criticize him for such a strategy, and what makes this letter so effective and powerful is that his audience, the people he is trying to convince, are eight ministers who criticized Martin Luther Kingfor bringing his movement to Alabama.

King intuits how significant it is that he lacks the support of his fellow clergymen, and he pens this letter in response, saying that he has come to Alabama because “injustice is here” and he considers injustice to be a threat to all people, irrespective of geographical, racial, or other artificially constructed demographic categories that divide people. King effectively traces his notions about civil disobedience all the way back to the Bible, an effective persuasive strategy because it appeals to what the eight clergymen know. He crystallizes his own definition of civil disobedience by explaining the four steps that comprise it in one of the important quotes from “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: “collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self- purification; and direct action” (  ). In this way, the reader sees that King has built upon Thoreau’s conceptualization of civil disobedience as a process of becoming right with oneself through an examination of conscience and values and then following up with action. The desired outcome of civil disobedience, King writes, is “to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored” (  ). He, perhaps more than any other individual, understood the power of civil disobedience and wielded it effectively.

Other figures from the civil rights era engaged in civil disobedience as well, though their acts are, perhaps, more subtle. The poet Amiri Baraka, for instance, used his poems as a tool of active, non-violent resistance. While Baraka was considered to be politically radical, his poetry constituted an act of civil disobedience, as it called for attention to be directed to the plight of African Americans, just as Thoreau did more than a century earlier. In his poems “An Agony.As Now” and “A Poem for Willie Best,” among others, Baraka’s voice urges social change. “Give me / Something more / Than what is here,” he says in “A Poem for Willie Best.” Might the “renegade / behind the mask” in this same poem be Baraka behind, or within, his own poem? While there are images of violence in the poem, Baraka does not seem to advocate violence; rather, the discharge of strong emotion through poetry becomes his act of resistance, and one in which the reader can share.

Personally, there are definitely principles for which I would consider civil disobedience, although I would want, like King and the civil rights movement activists, to practice this form of resistance not just individually, but in community. I could see myself engaging in civil disobedience in an effort to bring greater attention to serious social problems that cause great debate: the persistence and pervasiveness of poverty and the war are two problems that come to mind immediately. In my opinion, however, I see less of an enthusiasm for civil disobedience today than in this readings from the past, which causes me to wonder whether civil disobedience remains effective as an instrument for social and political change. There are some contemporary examples of civil disobedience that are incredibly inspiring, including the actions of Cindy Sheehan in her one-woman protests against the War in Iraq, but I do not see the kind of widespread support for civil disobedience that there was at one time in this country’s history.

Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Narrative, Rhetoric, and Civil Disobedience  in the Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.  • Transcendentalism and the Poetry of Walt Whitman  • Persistent Themes in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats  •  Summary and Analysis of the Poem “Departmental” by Robert Frost  •  Poem Analysis of “Traveling Through the Dark” by William Stafford  •  Romanticism in Poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge •   An Analysis of Common Themes in Victorian Poetry

Works Cited

Baraka, Amiri. “A Poem for Willie Best.” In The Norton Anthology of American Literature.

Shorter 6th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

King, Martin Luther. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In The Norton Anthology of American

Literature. Shorter 6th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” In The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 6th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.

Unlike those writing Victorian Poetry, the romantics consider childhood to be a time when nature, humanity, and even God are at one with one another and this magic lasts until the onset of adulthood. Once a child is an adult, the mysterious and powerful connection is severed and thus the romantic ideal of a supreme unity of the universe (through the child/nature relationship) exists no longer. Both poems at once lament this loss of a romantic relationship between earth, children, and God, as well as rejoice at the prospect of witnessing it occur with the children they are surrounded by.

In Coleridge’s poem, “Frost at Midnight,” in the true form of romanticism, the speaker considers childhood—both his own and that of the infant sleeping next to him—and discusses how nature and children are intertwined and, in many ways, dependent on one another. Interestingly, in this poem the natural world outside of the speaker’s home reflects the infant’s state of deep sleep and the reader is told,  ‘Tis calm indeed! So calm that it disturbs / and vexes meditation with its strange / And extreme stillness. Sea, hill, and wood…” (lines 5-10). Even before the poem and its themes have begun to unravel the reader is offered this clear connection between childhood and the natural world as the image of an ice-encrusted landscape deep in slumber is complimented by that of a deeply sleeping baby. These thoughts, which come to speaker because of the stillness of the outside world and the sleeping baby cause him to reflect about his own childhood and he mourns that he was not able to experience the important connection to the natural world because, as he puts it, “For I was reared / In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim, / And saw naught lovely but the sky and starts” (lines 55-57). As an adult, the speaker recognizes the importance of having an immediate and tangible connection to the natural world and vows that his infant  “Shalt wander like a breeze / By lakes and sandy shores…” (lines 58-59) and will be exposed to the natural elements so that he may not experience the melancholy that speaker has when considering how he was denied this exposure.

In “Frost at Midnight” by Coleridge, the speaker promises his child that he will understand nature and, “So shalt thou see and hear / The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible / Of that eternal language, which thy God / Utters, who from eternity doth teach/ Himself in all, and all things in himself” (lines 60-64). With this closing thought the speaker relates children and the natural world to God as well and demonstrates how seeing, hearing, and experiencing natural will allow his infant to be closer to God and understand him better. Because of this connection of the natural world, the child, and God, the speaker maintains that “all seasons shall be sweet” (67) to the young child as long as this relationship continues. In this poem it is clear that the speaker (perhaps because of his early lack of immediate connection to nature) realizes that there is something sacred about a child having direct access to the natural world. He seems to believe that this proximity will allow the infant to experience God and the concept in romanticism literature and poetry of unity between the human and natural worlds. Even though the speaker recognizes that there is a city outside of his quiet house that will eventually envelop the infant as he reaches adulthood, this foreknowledge does not taint the hopeful theme of the poem and states that the child, with access to nature, will go on to develop an almost magical connection with the world around him.

There are several themes that are common throughout the poems of William Butler Yeats. Many of poems by W.B. Yeats reflect an unrelenting obsession with the past—both the distant past and that of his personal life—and these fixations are symbolic of his fear of growing old or aging and a persistent fear of death. There were many things W.B. Yeats wanted to accomplish, one of which was gaining the hand of his long-time love Maud Gonne. Images of her, both as she appeared to him in his memory and as expressed by allusions are frequent throughout Yeats’ poetry as are his numerous references to the grim process of aging and preparing for death. For Yeats, death or even aging alone was not the romantic end or dramatic solution—it was an organic process that caused a man to become hollow and scarecrow-like.

Along with this thesis statement expressed here on the similarities in themes in the poems by W.B. Yeats and their fixation on death and aging, it should also be noted that many of the poems by Yeats induce an image of an aged man as such a scarecrow or as a man in tatters with little left of any substance. Such a man is only able to stagnate in one position and can only look backward since moving forward is no longer a possibility. Although this is a rather bleak image, it is highly representative of the many struggles W.B. Yeats endured in as a young man, a frustrated suitor, a political pioneer, and finally, an aged poet—a sage. Although traces of these themes are recurrent in several poems by William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Among Schoolchildren,” and “The Circus Animal’s Desertion” portray these complex themes most completely.

One of the most stunning poems reflecting implicit fear of aging in poems by William Butler Yeats occurs throughout “Sailing to Byzantium.” This poem was written in 1926 as W.B. Yeats was growing older and beginning to realize the meaning and consequences of old age. “Sailing to Byzantium” reflects the speaker’s desire to return to an older age far from the youthful excesses and their inability to recognize age and wisdom. One of the important quotes from “Sailing to Byzantium” is at the beginning and says, “that is no country for old men. The young / in one another’s arms, birds in the trees—those dying generations” which discusses the reason for the speaker’s journey. He no longer feels he has a place among the youthful exuberance and seeks something more fulfilling and ancient. Although the young represented in the poem by William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium” are “those dying generations” they are nonetheless too engaged with their trivialities to understand the pursuits of an old man who feels he is condemned to live in an aging body, or “fastened to a dying animal” while his soul yearns to be free.

American history and literature are intertwined and are reflective of one another. Both the starting and ending points of this time period reveal America overcoming a severe crisis. American history since 1865greatly influenced the literature that came after it. In 1865, the Civil War had finally ended and the country was exhausted and war-weary. At the beginning of Roosevelt’s term, there was a similar situation as the country was recovering from the Great Depression.

In both cases, there is a period of relative tranquility to follow; Reconstruction in the South after the War and later, Roosevelt’s “New Deal” before the build-up to the Great War. This period of time saw great advances in technology and industry and such shifts had a drastic effect on population, society, and culture. It is also important to note that this half-century saw an increase in the demand for rights by women, African Americans, workers, and other groups who were beginning to understand that they desired input about how their country should operate.

The moral impact of the Civil War cannot be underestimated. With hundreds of thousands of causalities and the breakdown of the South, there was a great sense of despair, especially in the decade immediately after the conflict. Even with heavy hearts, however, the course of progress continued and the first transcontinental railroad was completed and in use by 1869. This is one of the most importantdevelopments of the post-Civil War period as it not allowed more efficient transport of goods across vast distances, but this fact in turn encouraged greater levels of production and industrialization. From 1869 and the railroad’s urging on of industry, there was a shift from the rural towns and agricultural settlements to an urban migration. Steam engines and other machinations had been developed to increase the output capacity of factories and cities such as Chicago became important industrial as well as cultural centers.

More people were from the rural areas were migrating to cities and this fact was compounded by the large numbers of immigrants arriving in such urban places with a hope for work. Construction and industrialization were booming shortly after the arrival of the railroad and these centers offered not only work, but the possibility for immigrants and “country folk” to live the American dream. There was more of everything during this period; more industry, more machines, more communication (telephones had been developed 1876) and the country, despite the wounds that remained exposed after the Civil War, was humming along at a rapid pace.

The era after the Civil War also held new possibilities for African Americans as they left their roles as an enslaved people and sought out new opportunities, most often in the large cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland (the latter two cities had seen railroad connections of their own only a few years after the first one had been developed). This new population not only began dispersing throughout the country, but writing and organizing as well. Authors such as W.E.B. Dubois were vocal about the status of African Americans and this tradition of the written word as instrument of change continued well past the term of Roosevelt. From the Jim Crow laws that were instituted shortly after the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance, it is important to recognize how crucial this time period was for the emergence of a distinct African American voice. With the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance around 1920, there was a significant artistic presence of African Americans that countered the still-codified segregation of much of America and sought to express discontent in a non-violent and symbolic way.

The movement of African-Americans and the increasing demand for recognition was mirrored by the women’s suffrage movement, which began in 1869 (along with the development of the railroad) gradually gained momentum throughout the half-decade and branched out to include other issues of women’s rights as well. From Emily Dickinson at the beginning of this period, all the way up to Zora Neale Huston, it was becoming clear that women were communicating and organizing in new ways and allowing them to be heard for the first time. The 1920s and ushered in a new age of feminism and the bonds of Victorian ideals of femininity were gradually being shed. Icons of the female political movement such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton were gaining widespread popularity among women and the first inkling of organized feminism was emerging and is reflected in critical works of fiction such as Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” andHurston’s “Sweat” which criticized the injustices of being under a man’s control.

Many injustices were being explored at this period, not just in terms of gender and racial equality, but for workers as well. The rapid industrialization caused a few monopolies such as that of Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, which produced new legislation to deal with large companies and more importantly, caused the average worker to see the importance of unifying and relying on the strength of their numbers to ensure fairness and rights. In 1905, the organization, Industrial Workers of the World was formed and forged a model for further labor movements. Also, it is important to point out that the Ford Motor Company began producing automobiles shortly after the turn of century, where not only opportunities for relatively inexpensive transportation, but employment was created. Workers understood that there could be success in industry but that it would be a constant battle to ensure their needs.

The Great Depression brought the progress of the early part of the century to a halt. While the Great War had terrible social impacts (think of Owen’s poem “Dolce Decorum Est” for example) the economic benefits of war drove the economy. The Depression reminded people that they were still vulnerable, even with all the new modern benefits many enjoyed such as electricity and radios. Many people suffered greatly and lost what wealth they had accumulated and much of the momentum had just been gained back at the end of Roosevelt’s term when already, it was time again to prepare for a second war.

America at this crucial period between centuries was complex and the literature of the time reflected this. Realism in American literature had begun in the early part of the nineteenth century yet still persisted in new forms. It no longer seemed reasonable to cling to notions of romanticism and many of the traces of the movement had been erased by the turn of the century. Realism was invested in revealing everyday life with a clear and focused purpose to record life as it really was. This seems fitting, especially for those in the urban centers since life, despite any of the more genteel convictions of the Victorians and those writing theVictorian period in American literature, was very real indeed—overcrowding, unemployment, dirty and unsafe working conditions were only a few problems confronting a typical working class man or woman at the turn of the century and realism captured this sensation perfectly. Even when one considers the works ofHenry James or Mark Twain, both writers of the period in question, there is a definite attempt, even through fiction, to present a reality that is not embellished with the ornaments of romanticism and instead seeks to represent a “slice of life” instead of painting a pretty picture.  It should also be mentioned that regional writing gained literary ground as Mark Twain and Kate Chopin revealed, in realistic detail, the minutia of their hometowns or created spaces imagined from the everyday. One can posit the theory that regional writing came about in response the loss of boundaries brought about the railroad and other communication networks—that somehow regional writing could preserve, in realistic detail, the perfection of a place.