Henry David Thoreau was an extremely influential writer of his time. He helped inspire the American transcendental movement as well as urge a nonconformist attitude to many Americans. This nonconformist idea is what left him in the woods at Walden Pond for two years while he tried to embody Emerson's idea of self-reliance. Throughout history, he continued to be an influence especially when it came to the fight for change and for revolution in fighting. His essay, Civil Disobedience, embodied a non violent resistance as the way to fight, In later years, several incredible people such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior used these ideas to encourage their successful nonviolent movements. In Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, he uses diction, imagery, and emotional appeal to get his message of nonviolence across. First of all, Henry David Thoreau's …show more content…
Using imagery allowed Thoreau to plant a seed in the mind of the reader. Planting that seed would leave them thinking about what they just read and if it had any meaning to it. Imagery made the words on the page come to life which aided greatly in the acceptance of Thoreau's particular essay. A prime example of imagery on page three hundred and eighty-eight and three hundred and ninety stated, "It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split." Clearly he painted the picture of the wooden almost toy like gun and conveyed nonviolence by saying that in the end, the gun will break. With that understanding, he proved that nonviolence required no weapons and obviously could outlast the gun. No one would have wanted to hurt someone who wasn't going to fight back. The human conscience made one feel guilty when that occurred. Those basic images founded the lasting principles for