2. AGENDA
Thoughts on Cicero?
Essay #3: Justice: Due Nov 13
Discussion: Thoreau
Bio
Rhetorical Strategies
Questions for Critical Reading
Suggestions for Writing Essay #3: Group discussion
3. Essay #3: Justice
Essay #3 will be in response to either the excerpt from
Cicero, Thoreau, or both.
Choose your topic from "Suggestions for Writing" on
pages 129-30, prompts 1-9 or on pages 157-58
prompts 1-6. The prompts are also listed on the
website.
It should be a least one page long but not longer
than two pages (excluding a works cited page).
It should be formatted MLA style.
It is due November 13 (Next Tuesday)
4.
5. Get into your groups
Spend 10 minutes preparing for our
discussion.
If you are not in a group, please see me.
7. Thoreau: A Brief Biography
• Essayist, poet, and Transcendentalist
• Born to a pencil maker in Concord, Mass. July 12, 1817
• Went to Concord Academy and then to Harvard
• Loved the outdoors
• Best known for his book Walden
• Once went to chapel in a green coat “because the rules
required black”
• Refused to pay his poll tax
• He died at 44 from tuberculosis
8. Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and
philosophical movement of the early nineteenth
century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Other
important transcendentalists were Henry David
Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker. Stimulated by
English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of
Herder, and the skepticism of Hume, the transcendentalists
operated with the sense that a new era was at hand. They were
critics of their contemporary society for its unthinking
conformity, and urged that each person find, in Emerson's
words, “an original relation to the universe.” Emerson and
Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature, and in
their writing. By the 1840s, they were engaged in the social
experiments of Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden; and, by
the 1850s in an increasingly urgent critique of American slavery.
9.
10. Thoreau uses balanced Thoreau uses a metaphor to
sentence structure to suggest that democratic
emphasize the ways that a government, as it exists in his
supposedly democratic and day, is actually a sham:
representative government can
be corrupted through the “It is a sort of wooden gun to
influence of powerful persons: the people themselves.”
“[Government] has not the In other words, Thoreau
vitality and force of a single suggests that government gives
living man; for a single man people the mere illusion of power
can bend it to his will.” while actually leaving them
powerless.
The rhetorical question, "Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or
shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or
shall we transgress them at once? ..... Why is it not more apt to anticipate and
provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and
resist before it is hurt?
11. First-person narration allows Thoreau personifies the State "as
Thoreau to frame a complex and a lone woman with her silver
abstract political issue in a voice that spoons." He casts government not
personally bears witness to the as a mechanical agent of injustice
human effects and consequences of but as a feminized object of pity.
government oppression. While During his stay in prison, Thoreau
confident in his conviction that comes to the realization that, far
slavery is morally wrong, Thoreau from being a formidable brute
generally avoids dogmatic, force, government is in fact weak
authoritative statements in favor of a and morally pathetic. That he should
more tentative, moderate first-person choose the figure of a woman to
voice. He prefers cautious make this point reveals an
formulations such as "This, then, is interestingly gendered conception of
my position at present" over more civil disobedience, given the
militant, definitive ones that might constant emphasis on the virtues of
alienate or put his reader on the men in relation to the State, here
defensive. personified as a woman.
12. Chiasmus “Under a government which imprisons any
unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison”
Allusion He utilizes techniques such
"But almost all say that such as repetition to emphasize
is not the case now. But such certain points (Anaphora).
was the case, they think, in "It does not keep the
the Revolution of '75. If one country free. It does not
were to tell me that this was settle the West. It does not
a bad government because it educate”
taxed certain foreign
commodities brought to its Analogy
ports, it is most probable that "If I have unjustly wrested
I should not make an ado a plank from a drowning
about it, for I can do without man, I must restore it to
them." him though I drown
myself.”
13. Paradox • Aphorism:
• “the progress from an
“It is truly enough said, that a absolute to a limited
corporation has no monarchy, from a limited
conscience; but a monarchy to a democracy, is
corporation of conscientious a progress toward a true
men is a corporation with a respect for the individual”
• “If a plant cannot live
conscience.”
according to its nature it dies
and so a man.”
14. What kind of government does
Thoreau feel would be most
just?
15. • “That government is best
which governs least” (137).
• “…I ask for, not at once no
government, but at once a
better government”
16. What is the individual‟s
responsibility regarding
supporting the government
when it is wrong?
17. “It is not man‟s duty, as a matter of course,
to devote himself to the eradication of
any…wrong; he may still properly have other
concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at
least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he
gives it no thought longer, not to give it
practically his support. If I devote myself to
other pursuits and contemplations, I must
first see, at least, that I do not pursue them
sitting upon another man‟s shoulders. I must
get off him first, that he may pursue his
contemplations too.”
19. “Under a government which imprisons
any unjustly, the true place for a just
man is also a prison…. Cast your whole
vote, not a strip of paper merely, but
your whole influence.”
20. “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey
them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and
obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we
transgress them at once? Men generally, under
such a government as this, think that they ought to
wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter
them. They think that, if they should resist, the
remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the
fault of the government itself that the remedy is
worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not
more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why
does it not cherish its wise minority?”
21. “If a government is maintaining unjust laws,
people should at once effectually withdraw
their support, both in person and property,
from the government. They should “not wait
till they constitute a majority of one, before
they suffer the right to prevail through them. I
think that it is enough if they have God on
their side, without waiting for that other one.
Moreover, any man more right than his
neighbors constitutes a majority of one
already.”
22. “…if one thousand, if on hundred, if ten men
whom I could name,—if ten honest men only,
—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of
Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were
actually to withdraw from this
copartnership, and be locked up in the
county jail therefore, it would be the
abolition of slavery in America. For it
matters not how small the beginning may
seem to be: what is once well done is done
forever. But we love better to talk about it:
that we say is our mission.
24. How would you
characterize the tone of
Thoreau‟s address?
Is he chastising his audience? Is he praising it? What opinion
do you think he has of his audience?
25. Explain what Thoreau means when
he says, “But a government in which
the majority rule in all
cases cannot be based on justice,
even as far as men understand it.”
26. How is injustice “part of the
necessary friction of the
machine of government?”
27. Why does Thoreau provide us with
“the whole history of „My Prisons‟”?
Describe what being in jail taught
Thoreau. Why do you think Thoreau
reacted so strongly to being in a
local jail for a single day?
28. Choose an example of
Thoreau‟s use of irony, and
comment on its
effectiveness.
29. How might Thoreau view the
responsibility of the majority to
a minority within the sphere of
government?
30. How clear are Thoreau‟s
concepts of justice? On
what are they based?
31. Is it possible that when
Thoreau mentions “the
Chinese philosopher" he
means Lao-tzu? Would Lao-
tzu agree that the individual is
“the basis of the empire”?
32. • Get into your teams
• Discuss the essay
questions
• Choose one to answer
Justice
33. Remember:
Include a thesis statement for your essay
Respond to all parts of the prompt
Choose an original title
Include a works cited page
Use MLA style formatting (TNR 12)
Include page numbers after quotations
Post #27 Essay #3
(1-2 pages). Choose your
topic from "Suggestions
for Writing" pages 129-30,
prompts 1-9 or pages 157-
58, prompts 1-6
HOMEWORK
