| Submitted by: | bahaha17 |
| Date Added: | 10 / 26 / 2008 |
| Category: | English Literature |
| Words | Pages: | 1307 | 6 |
| Views: | 786 |
Courage
“I wanted you to see what real courage is instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand” (Lee 128). Atticus tells that to his two sons, Jem and Scout Finch. Webster’s Dictionary defines courage as, “A quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear.” In other words, courage is doing something that you are afraid of but you do it anyways. Every character in To Kill a Mockingbird in some way showed courage, whether it was shooting a gun, overcoming an addiction, facing something they are afraid of, or even standing up for what they think is morally right. In To Kill a Mockingbird the theme courage is evident in the story as well as the world today.
The theme of courage was found throughout Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. All of the kids were deathly afraid of the Radley house. When Jem got dared to touch it, instead of looking like coward, he took the dare, even though he was afraid. Jem also shows great courage when he went to the Radley house to get his pants back, even though he had a chance of getting shot. Scout said, “As I tripped the roar of a shotgun shattered the neighborhood” (Lee, 53). This shows us that Mr. Nathan Radley shoots at whatever is in his backyard. Another character Mrs. Dubose has is addicted to morphine and makes a goal to die free from her weakness. She goes through a withdrawal period that is not easy to survive. Scout said, “Her head moved slowly from side to side. From time to time she would open her mouth wide, and I could see her tongue undulate faintly. Cords of saliva would collect on her lips; she would draw them in, than open her mouth again. Her mouth seemed to have a private existence of its own" (Lee, 107). This shows that what she wanted was hard to deal with. She eventually achieves her goal of dying free from everyone and everything. Just before she died, this took a lot of courage to want something and to make it happen. The next...
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