Every man gotta right
     To decide his own destiny.
     And in this judgment,
     There is no partiality.
     So arm in arms, with arms
     We will fight this little struggle
     ‘Cause that’s the only way
     We can overcome our little trouble (Marley L1-8).

According to the constitution, all men are equal. However, the government contradicts itself and its constitution by instituting unjust laws such as the segregation laws of the mid-twentieth century. This seems to be true throughout the world. Everywhere you look some level of injustice is being done. Bob Marley saw the injustices taking place in South Africa during the 1970’s and made his opinions heard through song. His music was very influential and made many people, who were previously unaware of South Africa’s unjust laws, realize that there was something wrong with the way the black majority was being treated unfairly through the enforcement of apartheid. The nonwhite majority, after a long period of time without action, finally decided to act against the white minority governing them. Unjust laws and ideas cannot be expected to just disappear after time. Some believe you must give people time to grow and realize their actions are morally wrong. Those who are against certain unjust laws but don’t take any action against them might as well put themselves in league with the oppressors. Someone who is really dedicated to abolishing laws they believe to be unjust shouldn’t live in submission and fear their oppressor. One must take action against the unjust laws and those who enforce them.

     Some speak the sounds
     But speak in silent voices… (de la Rocha L9-10).

Some people believe that certain laws are unjust and should no longer exist. However, they only talk about it. They’re voice isn’t heard, because they don’t want it to be heard. The majority lives in fear and submission, while few actually stand up and do something about the injustices plaguing the world. Zack de la Rocha says:

     If we don’t take action now
     We settle for nothing later
     We’ll settle for nothing now
     And we settle for nothing later (de la Rocha L33-36).

Actions may bring consequences, but people must deal with these consequences if they really believe something is unjust and they want to set an example. However, Zack de la Rocha is saying that not acting will bring the worst consequence: nothing. If you don’t act for what you believe in, then you’ll end up settling for nothing or no resolution to the problem at hand. In Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” Marley sings:

     I said I shot the sheriff but I swear it was in self defense…
     Freedom came my way one day
     And I started out of town, yeah!
     All of a sudden I saw Sheriff John Brown
     Aiming to shoot me down.
     So I shot, I shot, I shot him down
     And I say, if I am guilty I will pay (Marley L26-32).

The speaker gives an example of injustice being put upon him by ‘Sheriff John Brown.’ He acts against the sheriff by shooting him. The important thing here is that the speaker is willing to accept punishment if he is found to be guilty of the crime. It is important that one is willing to accept the consequences in acting against injustice. If you’re not willing to be punished for breaking the law, then you’re basically telling everyone that you’re not just going against the principle of the unjust law but the law itself. This separates civil disobedience from pure criminal intent. Sophocles’ Antigone, Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” as well as Tim O’Brien’s “On The Rainy River” all present the idea of civil disobedience and its personal consequences.

In Sophocles’ Antigone, Antigone is faced with a moral dilemma. She must decide whether or not to stand up and do what she believes in or to just sit back and do nothing. Antigone says to her sister Ismene,

     I think you know… Our two dear brothers: Creon is burying one to desecrate the
     other. Eteocles, they say, he has dispatched with proper rites as one judged fit to
     pass in glory to the shades. But Polyneices, killed as piteously, an interdict
     forbids that anyone should bury him or even mourn. He must be left unwept,
     unsepulchered, a vulture’s prize, sweetly scented from afar (Sophocles 192).

Creon has established a very unjust law. He has basically tried to undermine the laws of the gods by creating a law that doesn’t allow Polyneices’ body and soul to go where they were intended to go. Because of this law, the body and soul must remain rotting on earth for eternity. Creon is merely trying to return evil for evil since Polyneices was rebelling against his state. After Creon says, “My crime, of course, the discharge of my rule” (Sophocles 224), his son Haemon asks him, “What rule—when you trample on the rule of heaven?” (Sophocles 224). Creon doesn’t realize the moral implications of his decision to leave the body unburied and without mourning. So, Antigone decides to do something about it rather than allowing herself be forced into fear and submission. She says:

     Say that I’m mad, and madly let me risk
     The worst that I can suffer and the best:
     A death that martyrdom can render blest (Sophocles 195).

Antigone is willing to risk her life in order to show Creon’s law is unjust and immoral. She has the courage to overcome submission to the law in order defend her beliefs and prove it to be an unjust law. So, she goes to Polyneices’ body and performs a ritual on the body and gets caught in the act. She willingly goes along with the guards to Creon. She doesn’t try to deny anything or attempt to free herself in any way. She knew before she broke the law that it had certain consequences, and she was willing to accept them in order to prove her point. Antigone makes it clear that she is willing to meet her untimely death to gain justice. She says to Creon, “And if this hurries me to death before my time, why, such a death is gain. Yes, surely gain to one whom life so overwhelms. Therefore, I can go to meet my end without a trace of pain” (Sophocles 210).

Responding to criticism from certain white religious leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a letter explaining his theories on unjust laws and why action against them is necessary. Although he was strongly against the use of violence, King strongly supported action against injustice rather than doing nothing. His people were being treated very unfairly through the enforcement of segregation laws. He felt that they needed to do something against these laws. “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” (King 792). He believed that progress would never be made without his people’s action. The white religious leaders who criticized King’s actions said that action shouldn’t be taken. They felt that segregation would pass with time and that the white majority would eventually come to its senses. King disagreed. In “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” King states, “We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied’” (King 792). He felt that time would only make matters worse for blacks and that it would only come to benefit the oppressors.

More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more
effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this
generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but
for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on
wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be
co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of
the forces of social stagnation (King 796).

King urged the good people willing to take a stand to take action so that time wouldn’t lead to social regression. He wanted society to progress to a state of equality without injustice. He “…had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress” (King 795). King also wanted the white religious leaders to whom the “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was addressed to understand that the civil disobedience being displayed during the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t anything new to the world.

It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was
at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to
face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit
to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a
reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation,
the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience (King 794).

King participated in acts of civil disobedience because his people were being treated unfairly through the use of unjust laws. He wanted the situation to be resolved and for his people to come out of submission. Time couldn’t have solved the problem of segregation and racism. Justice could only be obtained through civil disobedience.

“All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit” (O’Brien 39). In Tim O’Brien’s “On the Rainy River” from The Things They Carried, he believes bravery comes when you’re willing to take action against something you believe to be morally wrong. He also feels that if someone takes action, then that person must be willing to receive whatever punishment, ridicule, or sacrifices come along with such action. In his story, O’Brien is torn between going to war, something he does not want and morally objects to, and fleeing the country in order to escape. “It was a kind of schizophrenia. A moral split. I couldn’t make up my mind. I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile. I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents. I feared the law. I feared ridicule and censure” (O’Brien 45). He couldn’t make up his mind whether or not to accept his being drafted into the war or escaping from the whole thing. Going to war meant turning his back on his anti-war beliefs, but fleeing the country, he feared, would lead to exile from his family and friends, ridicule, and leaving behind everything he knew and loved. After deciding to make a run for the border, he came across an old man. The old man took him fishing near the Canadian border. He was twenty yards from freedom. O’Brien writes,

I remember staring at the old man, then at my hands, then at Canada. The shoreline was dense with brush and timber. I could see tiny red berries on the bushes. I could see a squirrel up in one of the birch trees, a big crow looking at me from a boulder along the river. That close—twenty yards—and I could see the delicate latticework of the leaves, the texture of the soil, the browned needles beneath the pines, the configurations of geology and human history. Twenty yards. I could’ve done it. I could’ve jumped and started swimming for my life. Inside me, in my chest, I felt a terrible squeezing pressure. Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it—the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You’re at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You’re twenty-one years old, you’re scared, and there’s a hard squeezing pressure in your chest… What would you do? … Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you’re leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did? … I tried to swallow it back. I tried to smile, except I was crying. … Now, perhaps, you can understand why I’ve never told this story before. It’s not just the embarrassment of tears. That’s part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn’t decide, I couldn’t act, I couldn’t comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity (O’Brien 56-57).

O’Brien knew that the courageous thing would have been to swim for the border and to leave his past behind in order to escape the unjust war in which he was being forced to fight. He didn’t have enough courage to act for his morals and beliefs; however, he did realize that action was necessary. This is something he would live with for his entire life. At the end of the story, he writes, “I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war” (O’Brien 61). He lived in fear of the ridicule, the sacrifices, and the unjust law.
The majority “has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will” (Thoreau 282). A person has great potential to do what is necessary to stand up against immorality and injustice. He can bring justice through his actions. The majority doesn’t have the power to do anything, because they are not willing to act. The majority lives in submission to the law.

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail
through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of
masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of
slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but
little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves.
Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by
his vote (Thoreau 287).

One must be willing to do more than just voice their opinion about an injustice; they must be willing to stand alone against the fear and submission from the majority. Influence and action can only come when one does not conform to the majority. “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight” (Thoreau 291). One person who is well known to all is a woman named Rosa Parks. This black woman refused to give her seat in the front of a Montgomery bus up to a white person, which she was required to do by law. She was someone who had the courage to take action, because she was sick of the way blacks were being treated in America. One woman’s action led to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Rosa Parks’ decision to take action against white oppression is proof that one person’s action can do a lot to stop injustice. Willingness to act and accept the consequences for your actions will eventually lead to justice. One must be heard in order to influence the majority.

Works Cited

de la Rocha, Zack (Rage Against the Machine). "Fistful of Steel". Rage Against the
Machine. Sony Music Entertainment Inc. 1992.

de la Rocha, Zack (Rage Against the Machine). "Settle for Nothing". Rage Against the
Machine. Sony Music Entertainment Inc. 1992.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. "Letter from Birmingham Jail".

Marley, Bob (Bob Marley & The Wailers). "I Shot the Sheriff". Burnin'. Tuff Gong
Records. 1972.

Marley, Bob (Bob Marley & The Wailers). "Zimbabwe". Survival. Tuff Gong Records.
1974.

O'Brien, Tim. "On The Rainy River". The Things They Carried. Broadway Books.
New York, 1990.

Sophocles (Translation by Paul Roche). "Antigone". The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles.
Penguin Books USA Inc. New York, 1991.

Thoreau, Henry David (Ed. By John Somerville and Ronald E. Santoni). "On the Duty of
Civil Disobedience". Social and Political Philosophy. Anchor Books. New
York, 1963.