Compare And Contrast Letter From Birmingham Jail And Antigone

The line between adapting to society and unabashedly being your self is fine and hard to find. Humans often feel pulled between trying to adhere to personal moral code and the written laws of society. Those who walk this fine line and question the morality of the governing body are often attacked and ridiculed, sometimes even physically harmed. In both “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and Antigone the protagonists are persecuted for retaining their personal values as they fought to pave a new path in a direction of adaptation and new social norms. In our path to live the good life we must fight for what we deem worthy and so change the very society we are a part of.
In Antigone, Antigone uses the burial of her brother to show how the government

But this shows the book’s central conflict between personal codes of ethics. It makes us question if society’s laws must always be followed and what circumstances garner breaking the rules. I personally believe that when you do not agree that the laws pay respect to everyone’s equal opportunity to live out their own good life, you have the responsibility to change it. Just as Martin Luther King once wrote, “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws” (Letter). We must change the very moral fabric of civilization one person at a

was thrown into jail for peacefully protesting racism, which was being ignored to a large extent by the government. His protesters argued that he acted hastily and had no place to interfere in Birmingham while he argues that change on a small scale will affect the broad scale eventually. As he says in the letter “Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds”(Letter). By doing small-scale protests he was affecting change countrywide. The small city strike was essential to his mission to desegregate America and give equal opportunity to