Civil disobedience allows one to convey their thoughts and ideas in a passive, nonviolent way. It can be used when one believes that they are morally correct and know that there are others that will agree with them. Antigone, from Sophocles Antigone, and Martin Luther King Jr. in his letter, Letter from Birmingham Jail, both chose to fight for justice rather than preserve their own safety. They both violated laws that they believed were unjust in order to help people and were willing to suffer the consequences that their actions brought upon them. In other words, they believed that there was a higher good that required them to disobey specific laws. However, even though they both had the same intentions, the methods that they used to achieve their goals differed …show more content…
Antigone could not understand why such laws existed and why people enforced them, especially since she thought that the power of the gods was greater than the power of any king; whereas Martin Luther King Jr. actually understands the difference between a just law and an unjust law, and realizes the harm that these unjust laws may have on the people that choose to follow them.
In Sophocles Antigone, Antigone demonstrates, through civil disobedience, that breaking some of society’s laws is both a right and a responsibility. “Alas! Just think, my sister, of our father – how he perished, hated and in ill-repute, for errors he himself detected, after he himself gouged out his two-fold eyes with self-inflicted hand...our death will be the worst by far, if we defy the law, and go beyond the power and vote of kings” (Sophocles, Lines 49-60). Ismene fears betraying the law of the state and fears what