Thoreau

Thoreau writes this piece to inspire people being oppressed by their govrnments to rise up and act to change it, but his ideology seems different than that of Ghandi and MLK. Ghandi and MLK chose to "fight" for what the rights that their govrnments were not giving to their people, but they never actually fought, but practiced "civil disobedence". This idea of protest without violence to invoke change doesnt really seem to be in Thoreau's work, unless im overlooking something. To me, Thoreau is saying that if someone is feeling oppressed by their government on some major issue, that they must rise up and change that government no matter what the cost. Thoreau also talks about the concept of people serving the government, mainly the army, begin to "serve" their government without a conscience, blindly taking orders, this he says, is deconstructive. To make is short, I think the main theme of his work so far is that people need to follow their heart and act to perserve morality, but the problem is that people always have differing views about what is moral/ethical or not.