What Are The Similarities Between Antigone And Letter From Birmingham Jail

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The two stories of “Antigone” and of “The Letter from Birmingham Jail” both have the main theme of Civil Disobedience. This is the emphasis on God’s law over Mans law, and both stories show this in different ways. However, one story is clearly better than the other. In “Antigone”, Creon has ordered that Eteocles, Antigone’s brother be buried with all the formal rites, but that Polynices, the other brother, be left unburied on the streets. Antigone thinks that this is unfair and inhumane, so she secretly does all the rites and “buries him”. She gets caught, but since Creon’s son, Haemon, loves Antigone, he decides to imprison her forever under a mountain. They both commit suicide, and soon, Creon’s wife follows suit. In “The Letter from Birmingham …show more content…

This is pathos because the author is showing a visual image using words, and is appealing to your emotion of sorrow. However, this use of pathos is not as strong, because it does not go deep into the feeling, and only appeals to one sense of the five. “When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people”(Page 3 Paragraph 14). This example appeals to your sorrow, and the innocence of the child brings out the fact that we weren’t born separate, and we won’t die separated, but white people have to differentiate based on the outside. This quote appeals to more than just one of the 5 senses, and that makes it more