To Kill a Mockingbird Essay

TKMB ESSAY “True Courage”

Having a personal trait assigned to you by others is always nice. Having someone say you are kind or persistent means you have exemplified a positive feature of yourself that others would like to have. In Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” the trait of courage is exhibited by many characters in the novel. What do you think a person would have to do for you to call them courageous? In today’s society we generally default to a superhero or a cop as a courageous person, someone in the line of battle and in the heat of danger. This is not how Harper Lee portrays courage in her novel. She strives to emphasise that courage can be shown in many ways, all the acts just as courageous as the next. In the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee attempts to make a statement that there are many ways to show courage through multiple characters, signifying that we too should not think of courage being displayed in a single form.

One way courage is detailed in the novel is people sticking through a situation even if you already know it will not end well. Atticus’s relentless defence of Tom Robinson shows one form of Atticus’s courage. Here is a passage from the book of Atticus and Scout talking: “‘If you shouldn’t be defendin‘ him, then why are you doin’ it?’ (said Scout) ‘For a number of reasons,’ said Atticus. ‘The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.’” (41) Throughout the trail of Tom Robinson, Atticus never gives up on proving Tom is innocent and did not rape Mayella Ewell. Although Atticus is 100% certain he will not win the case due to the all-white jury and racism at the time, Atticus goes on and gives it his all defending Tom. Atticus is true to his word and himself showing everyone in town his fortitude in thought. Atticus says he would not be able to keep his head up in town if he did not...