Opposition to Imprisonment

Opposition to Imprisonment is Mike’s conviction that confinement is intrinsically wrong: it violates a person’s integrity and freedom of self, even where killing might be judged necessary. During his escape from jail, he gives the principle public and practical force by destroying barriers and disarming the authorities that hold people in custody.

Principle and Rationale

Ben explains that Mike is not simply too gentle to tolerate imprisonment. In Ben’s account, Mike could kill without being troubled by the act, but regards locking someone up as a profound wrongness. The principle joins freedom of self to complete personal responsibility: each person must be free to direct himself, rather than be confined by another’s authority.

Jubal initially understands Mike’s objection as compassion: he agrees that it would hurt Mike to see anyone imprisoned. Ben corrects that interpretation. The distinction matters because Mike’s opposition is not an expression of softness or a general reluctance to use force. It is a judgment about confinement itself and its offense against personal integrity.

The Jail Break

After being arrested on an exceptionally broad set of charges, and denounced as the Antichrist by Supreme Bishop Short that same day, Mike does not merely escape and return home. He leaves the jail’s bars and doors destroyed, then does the same at the nearby state prison. He also disarms the city, county, and state police forces.

Ben describes this sweeping response as both a way of giving the authorities a dilemma to consider and an expression of Mike’s deep aversion to imprisonment. The escape therefore exceeds the immediate aim of freeing himself: it attacks the machinery of confinement and forces those who use it to confront the principle behind his actions.

Conflict and Significance

Ben’s explanation frames the conflict in terms of integrity rather than a simple opposition between violence and gentleness. Mike may regard killing as potentially necessary; confinement, by contrast, is an offense against both the prisoner’s integrity and the integrity of the person who imposes it. The distinction makes individual freedom inseparable from responsibility for how power is exercised.

The principle also clarifies why Mike’s answer to arrest is so disruptive. He does not ask the authorities to recognize an exception for himself; he dismantles the barriers and weapons that make imprisonment enforceable. His escape becomes a practical challenge to the legitimacy of locking people up, while leaving the authorities to decide how to respond to a demand that reaches beyond the original arrest.