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To kill a mockingbird essay on atticus
Essay on atticus
Atticus character essay
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Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird once stated that the one thing that does not abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience (Lee 140). To Kill a Mockingbird, set in 1955, is about an old country town called Maycomb. Atticus Finch, a widower with two children, leads a fairly simple life as a lawyer in Alabama. With the help of the family nanny, Calpurnia, Atticus teaches his children many valuable life lessons. Throughout the book, there are many ways that Atticus instills conscience in his children. When the children are playing and poking fun at a man that lives across the street named Boo Radley, Atticus illustrates that they should be more careful and courteous to other people. Another time, he taught his children about courage by having them read to an elderly lady every day after school. Lastly, Atticus instilled conscience in his children by being an excellent example to them. By living and acting the same way that he taught his children to act, Atticus bestowed upon his children the lessons of
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He taught them about courage, strength, honor, pride, kindness, dignity, and faith. Atticus was always watching out for his children, searching for opportunities to teach them lessons they would never forget. Unsurprisingly, Atticus was instilling conscience in his children when he explained to them that it was unwise to tease somebody, when he revealed that Mrs. Dubose was courageous, and when he stood before the court with honor, defending a man that nobody thought twice about The most important lesson that Atticus taught his children was about courage. Courage is a feeling that will stick with someone every day of their life. The earlier one learns to be courageous, the earlier one excels and matures. “There is one thing that does not abide my majority rule”, Atticus explained to his children one day, “a person’s
Atticus Finch is a very essential character in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. He is not only the father on Jem and Scout, but he is also defending Tom Robinson. Along with all of the obstacles and challenges that Atticus faces he is still an exceptional role model for the children. He also overcomes the diversity of Negroes and whites that is displayed during his time by standing up and fighting for Tom Robinson and his triumph in court against Bob Ewell. Lee presents Atticus Finch as understanding of Tom Robinson, caring with the children, and calm throughout the Tom Robinson trial.
Atticus Finch is the most significant character, in To Kill a Mockingbird, who challenges racial prejudice as he does not follow the norms, in Maycomb, of being racially prejudice towards others. At first, Atticus Finch is reluctant to take on Tom Robinson’s case; however in the end, he willingly accepts. Unlike the majority of Maycomb residents, Atticus is not racist and makes no distinction upon race, he sees Negroes, just like Tom Robinson, as the same equality as any other person in the Maycomb community. For this reason, he believes they should be trea...
The most important thing Atticus teaches in To Kill a Mockingbird is the message about how to best educate a child. From the beginning of the book, it's plain to see that Atticus has been down on his luck most of his life. "It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyways and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do"(124). He strives to give Scout and Jem spirit, bravery and tolerance of others. "If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--until you climb into his skin and walk around in it" (30). He teaches this life lesson to show that it's actually achievable to live with principles without losing sight of hope or acting skeptical. Atticus is able to highly regard Mrs. Dubose's courage even though he disapproves of her continuous acts of racism. "She had her own views about things, a lot different from mine, maybe...son, I told you that if you hadn't lost your head I'd have made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her-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" (128).
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior, to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, and the struggle between blacks and whites. Atticus Finch, a lawyer and single parent in a small southern town in the 1930's, is appointed by the local judge to defend Tom Robinson, a black man, who is accused of raping a white woman. Friends and neighbors object when Atticus puts up a strong and spirited defense on behalf of the accused black man. Atticus renounces violence but stands up for what he believes in. He decides to defend Tom Robinson because if he did not, he would not only lose the respect of his children and the townspeople, but himself as well.
To Atticus real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. This is an important life lesson everyone should
As a father, Atticus Finch tried to make his kids the best they can be. He tried teaching them that just because everyone acts a certain way, doesn’t mean they have to be close-minded and go along with it. Furthermore, he tries teaching them to always place themselves in someone’s position before judging them. Atticus leads them with example in the way he fought for Tom Robinson, tried helping Mayella Ewell deal with her father, and tried protecting Boo Radley from harassment. In conclusion, Harper Lee portrayed a sense of universal understanding in her novel.
We all have a conscience that tells us to do the right thing. When we make bad decisions, our conscience isn’t, well, conscious. Either that, or we ignore it completely. No matter how adamant you are, your thoughts may overpower your conscience and make you do something regrettable. This predicament is showcased in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee quite often. Many of the characters ignore what they know is right and act upon what they think will result in a better outcome than that of doing the right thing.
Courage is having the strength to do something that is frightening to most people. It can be something large scale like the responders on 9/11 risking their lives for hundreds of people. Courage can also be something of smaller scale but just as significant like standing up for a black man in a town of racial prejudice. In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, many of the characters she has initiated show courageous qualities. One of those characters is Atticus Finch, father of Jem and Scout who demonstrates courage many times throughout the novel. Standing up for his beliefs, restraining from the negligent tauntings of his neighbors and defending a man whose innocence will not be proved, all show Atticus is the most courageous character
Growing up in Maycomb, Southern Alabama in the 1930s was not an easy thing. Amid a town of prejudice and racism, stood a lone house where equality and respect for all gleamed like a shining star amid an empty space. The house of Atticus Finch was that shining star. Jean Louise Finch, also known as “Scout”, is given the opportunity of being raised in this house by her father, Atticus. I stole this essay from the net. As she grows, Atticus passes down his values of equality and righteousness to Scout and her brother Jeremy Atticus Finch, also known as “Jem”. In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, by Harper Lee, we see Scout learns many lessons about dealing with prejudice by observing the behavior of other characters in the story.
Lois McMaster Bujold once said, “Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. Atticus Finch a heroic figure in the novel To Kill a MockingBird by Harper Lee is known as a white lawyer who defended a “black” man accused of raping Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a disturbing man, Bob Ewell. Atticus knows his reputation is at risk, when he decides to take a black man’s court case. He is appointed to this case because Mayella Ewell blamed an innocent black man, Tom Robinson of raping and beating her. She fails to admit the truth due to obeying her father. In the 1930’s racism was extremely crucial and no matter what the truth was a white person was most likely believed over an African American. Miss Maudie, The Finches neighbor tells the kids, “There are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them” (Lee 219). Atticus Finch is highly respected and someone everyone can look up too in Maycomb, Alabama. Throughout the novel, Atticus presents himself as calm, courageous, and an open-minded person.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a story about equality. In the setting of this book (Maycomb, Alabama) the inequality of races is completely normal to people’s everyday lives. The disrespect of African-Americans in this book is an ordinary occurrence that most people have grown up accustomed to, but there are some who don’t wish to be a part of this discrimination. One of these people being Atticus Finch, the father of Jem and Scout. Atticus uses the world around him to teach his children how to give all people respect no matter what their race or social class is. Atticus Finch is a good-hearted, moral lawyer in the discriminatory town of Maycomb Alabama. Amongst the blabbermouths and discriminatory townspeople of Maycomb, Atticus wants his children to be different from them, and to learn how to respect the dignity of everyone using the changes in their lives to teach them.
Scout believes at the beginning of the book that courage is all to do with physical feats like fist fighting. Scout and Jem though Atticus was courageous when he shot the mad dog, but Atticus just shrugged it off telling his children that that is not ?real courage?. The children soon see that moral courage is more valuable after Miss Dubose said "Your father's no better than the niggers and trash he works for!" Chapter 11, Page 113 after they walked past her house. On the way back Atticus just walked by and told Mrs. Dubose, ?you look as pretty as a picture? Mrs. Dubose was so stunned that she could not say a word back to him. Later Jem and scout leaned how courageous Mrs. Dubose really was after Jem cut up her camellia bushes, the kids found out that she was a morphine attic brave enough to get off the drug that killed her.
These morals are bound to the “impartiality” and “fairness” taught to people as children, but become unavoidably invisible through selfish actions. The characters in To Kill a Mockingbird express audacity along with resilience in the face of cowardice. In the novel, one of the main characters is the father of the narrator, Atticus Finch. He is portrayed as a just character with common social grace. As the novel develops, Atticus begins to portray courage and sacrifice that goes against all common propriety.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it” (Lee 30). Atticus Finch teaches his children to look at life and people in a different way, and he also practices what he preaches to his children. By focusing on the coexistence of good and evil, the importance of moral education, and the existence of social inequality one could argue to prove these points and how they form the themes of Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird.
“You never really understood a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around it.” Atticus Finch is a man of extreme integrity. He, as both a lawyer and a human being, stands up for his democratic beliefs and encourages his children to stand up for their own, though they may stand alone. Harper Lee showed how far respect went in To Kill a Mockingbird when Atticus defended Tom Robinson in his rape trial. He did not think twice about being ridiculed by th...