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Nonviolent Resistance In 'Pray The Devil Back To Hell'

Decent Essays

There are many different ways human beings deal with oppression. One way is nonviolent resistance, which is a term for describing a range of methods to deal with conflict without the use of violence. Individuals such as the Liberian women and Mohandas Gandhi claim that nonviolent resistance is justified through acts of harmonious protests and more likely to produce peaceful and constructive outcomes. Harmonious protests justify the concept of nonviolent opposition because it achieves public sympathy. In Pray the Devil Back to Hell, the Liberian women marched down the streets, and as they continued to march other women would leave their homes and join in to support their strive for peace. Through this act of peaceful resistance, the women gained recognition and support from society which made the government rethink the flaws in their system and began to listen to the women in order to bring social change. …show more content…

Some may argue that nonviolent resistance is ineffective because they believe force needs to be utilized in order to receive attention and fulfillment of your needs. However, nonviolent opposition is more likely to produce more constructive rather than destructive outcomes. In Mohandas K. Gandhi's excerpt On Nonviolent Resistance, he states that “Everywhere wars are fought and millions of people are killed. The consequence is not the progress of a nation but its decline…”(Gandhi 6). Gandhi believes that violence and war is tangential to the original goal and that violence will only allow a nation to move away its goal. However, peaceful and nonviolent acts focus on the subject at hand and follows a strategy aimed at mobilizing the people and undermining its opponents’ pillars of

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