The Prevailing Message Throughout Sophocles Antigone And...

The prevailing message throughout Sophocles’ Antigone and King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is that civil disobedience serves the purpose of fighting and correcting injustice in situations where systemic breaks in adherence to natural law occurs. Injustice here as used here is not to be synonymous with things that are simply unlawful or unfair, but instead takes on a deeper and more specific definition pertaining to the natural moral codes that all laws, as argued by King and Antigone, ought to be based upon. It is by this definition that both Antigone and King find reasoning; that civil disobedience is absolutely necessary as the final option one must take when dealing with systemic, top-down injustice. Where there is dissonance between†¦show more content†¦In lines 449-525, when Creon examines Antigone after the burial of her brother, Antigone plainly admits that she follows Zeus’ moral laws before Creon’s law, citing Zeus’ to be â€Å" unwritten and unshakable† and â€Å"forever†, which contrasts with Creon’s, which are ephemerally â€Å"for now or yesterday†. Antigone’s extremism typified in her willingness to die just to correct a single lapse in morality that exists within the law makes the importance placed upon founding law in morality as clear as it can possibly be. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is a near perfect articulation of his revolutionary ideas on the nature and purpose of civil disobedience. Like Antigone, King’s intent for civil disobedience is to mend a gap between legal and natural law. His reasoning is more specific and less idealized than Antigone’s, but at a basic level, it’s the same struggle to fight for morality in law that compels him to write this letter. King saw the (important to note) legally justified treatment of Blacks in America as a crime against humanity – similar in function to Creon’s decree and Antigone’s reaction thereafter. King saw civil disobedience as a last resort, but the only option in the face of a systemic break in the rule of law and natural law, speaking to a larger idea of the nature