An elephant’s opinion carries a lot of weight. meaning

Stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, i could not being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if i were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. i wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. i saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as i was. i did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. i felt as if i alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. — “civil disobedience,” henry david thoreau based on this passage, how did thoreau feel about his confinement?

Read the excerpt from the odyssey then his chores being all dispatched she caught another brace of man to make his breakfast and whisk away his great door slab to let his sheep go through but he behind reset the stones as one would cap a quiver what two things are being compared in this epic simile

How does it change your understanding of the laws to read them as a primary source rather than just a summary of laws?