Examples Of Moral Courage In To Kill A Mockingbird

Moral Courage in To Kill a Mockingbird

A part of life is going through experiences that will make or break you depending

on the choices you make. The choice may be to do the morally right thing or the “wrong” thing. If you’ve ever faced one of these situations: What have you done? If not, What will you do? Whatever your decision is, make sure it’s the correct one because it can change your life forever and that is exactly what happened in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel that addresses racism and judgement in a small town and includes a plot and subplot. In both, you meet characters who have been put into positions in which they had to choose and this helped the theme of moral courage develop in the novel. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses the conflicts the characters face and the characters themselves as individuals to portray this theme of moral courage.

The first element that is used throughout the text is

conflict. This element is what enables lets the character to know if they have moral courage or not. During the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird, an important character is introduced. He goes by the name of Atticus. Within him is where the first example of doing the right thing is depicted. Atticus is a perfect example of someone doing what is right because he gives his all to give Tom Robinson a fair case in which the result is already known. “Every lawyer gets one case… one case in his lifetime that affects him personally… this one’s mine.” This quote supports the topic because it displays how seriously Atticus is taking this case. The amount of carefulness he’s handling this case with displays doing the right thing because he lives in a town where African Americans are treated inhumanely and he was given a case in which he has to protect one, so it’s expected of him to be careless but he’s doing the right thing by treating this case like he would any other. The element of conflict is present because Atticus is having an external battle with the people in the town who are racist and dislike what he is doing.

Another way the element of conflict is conveyed is through the character of Boo Radley. Boo Radley is described as a quiet person that no one ever sees. With the town being so curious of the mystery that is Boo Radley, rumors are spread about him and that’s all anyone “knows” about him. Boo displays moral courage by risking his reputation when helping the kids. When Bob Ewell attempts to kill the kids, Boo helps them and ends up killing Bob Ewell. This is an example of conflict because the town already has their mind made up on how Boo is, they “know” him as a scary, dangerous person. This conflict is internal because Boo debated within himself to help the kids because if he did, he knew it was a possibility that the people of the town could find out and he would be labeled as a murderer, or worse, he could go to jail or be killed by the people of the town. Despite that small chance, he did the right thing, risking himself, and rescued the kids.

The second element that is used throughout the story to portray moral courage is character.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, characters with different personalitys but the same mindset are introducued constantly. However, there are a few who do not fit in that category. One of those characters is Scout, Atticus’ youngest child and Jjem’s younger sister. Scout may be physically described as a young child but with how her mind works and the person that she is you’d never believe how young she is. Scout is an example of doing the right thing because once she realized how the world actually was, she removed herself from the mindset that everyone else had.“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” This quote shows how Scout is portraying moral courage because she is basically saying, we are all the same. None of us are better and none of us are less and this is a morally courageous way to think because she lives in a town where everyone has the same racist mindset even after the Tom Robinson

case.

Another way this element portrays moral courage is through the character of Boo Radley. Boo Radley embodies this theme because throughout all of the negative things that were said about him, he remained to himself which is a smart decision. Nothing positive is said about Boo Radley through the book until the end. It can be an assumption that Boo knew of all the negative things people thought and said about him, however, instead of acting irrationally and, proving them right, Boo stayed to himself. This is moral courage because he knew this was the right thing to do because if he didn’t people would treat him worse if he did act out and they’d never give him a chance if he did attempt to interact with the people of Maycomb one day.

In conclusion, the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a perfect example of conflicts and characters who display moral courage. The conflicts display moral courage because they’re either internal or external which is basically doing what you know you should do and what you want to do. The characters display moral courage because if it weren't for how they were portrayed and developed they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be different and do what they knew was right.