The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail

The argument between Henry and Waldo illuminates the differences between the men’s approaches to the notion of Freedom and Liberty for All, ultimately highlighting Waldo’s failure—at least in Henry’s eyes—to do sufficient good. For Henry, voting alone is not enough, and he begs Waldo to use his influence to rouse the community’s anger at Williams’s death. However, Waldo, unlike Henry, insists on following the law and says that social progress is always slow. He wants Henry to be more patient, and Henry wants Waldo to feel more urgency because people are dying while Waldo defers to this sluggishness. Henry essentially points out Waldo’s privilege, implying that Waldo can afford leisure because he is neither Black nor Mexican, and he is thus safe from the government’s unjust practices and laws. Stage direction emphasizes Waldo’s hypocrisy, showing that he is trying to be on “opposite sides” at once—while he advocates patience with injustice in his conversation with Henry, he lectures others about fighting injustice. Henry accuses him of seeing Williams as an “abstraction” rather than a real man, saying, “You may be able to use him sometime in a Lyceum lecture” (85). To Henry, Waldo sees Williams as evidence for an argument against enslavement, not as an actual person who recently chose his own name to inaugurate his new, free, future. Henry’s “acid sarcasm” shows his rapid loss of respect for his mentor.

Henry believes in The Importance of Simplicity, and this aids in his fight against injustice; however, Waldo is too attached to his comforts and his reputation, and he is hesitant to throw these away. Waldo says he wants his “warm toast and tea and soft-boiled egg brought to [him] on a tray in bed each morning” (86), explaining his disinclination to go to prison for opposing the government by pointing out that he will not be able to take the sheer discomfort of it. Henry counters by saying that America was not “hatched from a soft-boiled egg” (87). He reminds Waldo that revolution against injustice often requires law-breaking, as the colonies learned when claiming independence. If colonists agreed to “go along” with England’s rule and patiently await justice—as Waldo suggests he and Henry do now—America would not exist. Henry lives his ideals, in contrast to Waldo who theorizes more than he practices. This is why Waldo describes Henry as his “walking ethic:” Henry does what Waldo only talks about. On the other hand, Henry admits, “I can’t reach anybody. I can’t catch the attention of people. Nobody listens to me” (86). In refusing to conform to society, he has sacrificed his social acceptance and relinquished any hope of being taken seriously. Waldo, who is “reasonable,” is much more palatable to audiences precisely because he doesn’t push too hard or make people too uncomfortable by demanding that they live spare lives and sacrifice their comforts. Thus, Waldo retains his ability to reach others because he is more agreeable, but it is this very agreeability that incenses Henry.

Henry’s war dream employs symbols that represent his feeling of powerlessness and many more of his beliefs, experiences, and fears. In the dream, Henry cannot speak when he approaches President Waldo, representing his inability to persuade the man who could persuade so many others. Innocents, represented by Edward Emerson and John Thoreau, die while President Waldo stands “benign, impervious to the confusion” of the war raging around him (95). While President Waldo thinks, people are dying, symbolizing the real Waldo’s request for Henry’s patience with society’s resistance to change. Such patience is available only to those who are not in harm’s way. When Henry desperately implores someone to speak out, the emerging voice is Abraham Lincoln, who openly condemned the war as a young Congressman in 1846. Lincoln argued that the war was immoral and ran counter to American values. Though Henry doubts that Lincoln—who doesn’t “go along”—will be reelected to Congress, 21st-century readers know something Henry doesn’t: Lincoln will become the nation’s 16th president. This dramatic irony, rather than adding to the text’s tension, inspires hope. A powerful man does come along, and he marries Waldo’s popularity and influence with Henry’s principled decisiveness.

This hopefulness is maintained throughout the play’s finale. Henry stands up for Bailey, putting himself on the line to help the man get a fair and speedy trial. At the play’s conclusion, Henry hears the beat of an “eccentric, non-military drummer” (101), and he strides from the theater to this sound, though he would not march to the time kept by the military drum in his dream. The different drumbeats dramatize the idiom of “marching to the beat of one’s own drum,” which means that a person is not swayed by societal pressures. Henry refuses to obey the rigid drumbeat of the military drum, which symbolizes his choice of Conscience Over Country. However, he walks in tune with the “eccentric” drumbeat, even cutting through the audience in a nonconventional exit from the stage, which shows his refusal to submit to authority or conventions, or to compromise on his values. There is no falling curtain or dimming of the lights, indicating that Henry’s fight still continues.