Civil Disobedience In Sophocles Antigone

In Sophocles’ Antigone, Antigone had disobeyed specific laws given by King Creon, in order to defend the honor of her late brother, Polynices. However, Antigone is in no way considered to be lawless. Antigone believes that violence is not the answer, and therefore instead non-violent direct action should take place. However, Antigone’s approach of civil disobedience happened to be an anarchic and dramatic form of civil disobedience. Antigone decided to act on her beliefs by giving Polynices a proper burial. She believed she had a duty to protect and honor her family while having to “please those down below a longer time than those up here” (Blondell 74-75). In other words, if she herself wants to live a happy life after her death, then she

In order to do so, he had to punish the traitor, Polynices, even though he was family so that the people “could learn in full spirit of a man, his purpose or his judgement, till he has shown up by experience of rule and law” meaning that Creon would show the people he meant business, if anyone was trying to destroy his trying of returning normalcy to the city, blood related or not and that he had the people of Thebes best interests to get the city back to normal (Blondell 175-177). Antigone knew the city was in a state of turmoil and yet still disobeyed the King, who was trying to help the city with his decision of

Many people before him tried to take a stand and get past these hard times through the use of violence and were unsuccessful. Martin Luther King Jr., however, decided to take a different approach. He used civil disobedience in order to establish racial equality in Birmingham as well as the rest of the country. He did this because he knew “that he was cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. And he was unable to sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what would happened in Birmingham” meaning he knew that he if did not try to help Birmingham, other places would be affected too, and that is because when injustice occurs in one place, it indirectly affects people in other places as well (King paragraph 4). Martin Luther King Jr. had a well thought out, methodical plan of civil disobedience, because he knew that people who were oppressed would have bottled up anger and frustration that needed to be released another way that was not through violence, but yet through a more effective and correct way. According to Martin Luther King Jr., his methodical plan also known as a nonviolent campaign, consisted of “four basic steps: collection to the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self -purification; and direct action” (King paragraph 6) and would help the oppressed get justice. Martin Luther King Jr. states that he had already started his