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Prachi Wahi

Professor Subarno Chattarji

M. A. English (Fourth Semester)

20 Feb 2013

Civil Disobedience and the Need to Renounce Compliant Servitude

Civil disobedience, as a type of quiet political protest, is a doctrine coined

by Thoreau after his refusal to pay the state poll tax effectuated by the American

government to pursue war with Mexico and to implement the Fugitive Slave Law.

Thoreau’s argument triggered the notion of a non-violent non-cooperation

against the State not just in America but across continents, like in India by M. K.

Gandhi. In the contemporary world, civil disobedience has become an ideological

weapon for individuals to undermine the dictatorial dominance of the State under

the façade of democracy by engaging in peaceful hunger strikes, marches, rallies

etc. However, here one would be tempted to analyze this concept and the form it

can take when actively carried out.

Civil disobedience is a challenge posed to the injustice of law, which the

citizens of a country follow willingly in a so-called democracy, where actually “a

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few individuals [use] the standing government as their tool...” (Thoreau 1). Thus,

subliminally, citizens give their consent to a kind of compliant servitude. This is

the reason that, even though not actively being a participant in war, by paying

taxes; citizens become slaves to the ideology that supports war, crushed by the

overarching power of the State, which is no less than dictatorship. In this regard,

Thoreau says, “...if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to

hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up

in the county jail therefore, it would be the abolition of slavery in America...

Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is

also a prison” (Thoreau 7).

In his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain reaches at the same

juncture where Thoreau too arrives. In chapter XXXI, after much “thinking” and

vacillation over the choice of whether or not to let Jim fell back into the mouth of

slavery, Huck exclaims his famous pronouncement:

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (Twain 223).

This is what Thoreau too proclaims, that the only way to deal with the

authoritative government, is “to be put out and locked out of the State by her

own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles” (Thoreau 7).
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Further, it is worth taking into account that the idea of civil disobedience,

particularly when posed against the whole State and governmental authority,

should not be reduced to an extreme level of individualism, even though Thoreau

propagates the idea of recognising “the individual as a higher and independent

power” (Thoreau 14) as the basis for a truly progressed State. What Thoreau

seems to be suggesting by the assertion of individuality is rooted in his notion of

“conscience.” Thoreau here promulgates:

...we should be men first, and subjects afterward (Thoreau 2).

In Huck Finn too, one can find Huck, troubled by the duality of the so-called

civilized people of his society, taking a retreat into solitude, and later, following

the voice of his “conscience” to liberate Jim from the clutches of slavery.

According to Robert C. Evans, “any act of civil disobedience is rooted in a prior act

of obedience to individual conscience. . . Conscience, then, is key: The person who

practices civil disobedience obeys his own conscience, instead of society’s

conscience... His chief commitment is...” to a “principle higher than personal self-

interest” (Evans 21,22). For instance, the disruptive disobedience of law by the

Duke and Dauphin to loot and plunder, in Huck Finn, is not to be considered an

act of civil disobedience that Thoreau wants to invoke. Similarly, in chapter VI,
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when Pap yells out his frustration at the “govment,” one is supposed to read the

irony behind his statement:

...but when they told me there was a State in this country where

they’d let that nigger vote, I drawed out (Twain 39).

Such form of civil disobedience that violates the freedom of others and prospers

slavery is worth preventing and needs to be critiqued, as Twain does. However, as

Evans argues, towards the end of the book, due to the “evasion” scheme of Tom

Sawyer, Huck too becomes “Tom’s willing accomplice” (Evans 29) by yielding to

Tom’s “bogus plan for civil disobedience” (Evans 25) and “a desire for selfish

adventure” (Evans 26) in the name of liberating Jim. On the other hand, it is

eventually in Jim that one can encounter a genuine will for civil disobedience and

“a highly developed conscience” (Evans 23) who runs away not just to secure his

own freedom, but to rescue his wife and children as well.

Thus, one may conclude by saying that Thoreau’s civil disobedience calls for

respect for individuals by the State and a conscientious demeanour within

individuals to “resign [their] office” (Thoreau 7) when needed, and not to remain

bound by any unavailing compliant servitude.

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Works Cited

Evans, Robert C. "Civil Disobedience and the Ending of Mark Twain's The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Literary Themes:
Civil Disobedience. Ed. Blake Hobby. New York: Infobase publishing, 2010.
21-29.

Thoreau, Henry David. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. 1849.

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Ed. Thomas Cooley. 3rd. W.
W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2010.