The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss enslavement and racism.

The idea that people must follow their conscience rather than the dictates of their country (or other authority figures such as the church, society, or their employers) is paramount to the play and to the real life of Henry David Thoreau. In the play, Henry obeys his conscience when he refuses to pay his tax, which leads to his brief incarceration. The law states that citizens must remit various taxes, but Henry states, “if a law is wrong, […] it’s the duty of a man to stand up and say so. Even if your oddfellow society wants to clap him in a jail” (62). As a man of integrity, Henry feels it is his duty to break unjust laws, saying that the proper place for a just person in an unjust society is jail. This is why he is angry with Waldo; based on the ideas that Waldo espouses, he should have joined Henry in jail for refusing to pay his taxes, too. If Waldo truly opposes enslavement, Henry thinks, he would not provide the government with funds to extend the territory of enslavement.