To Kill A Mockingbird Quotes Courage

“Courage : the ability to do something that you know is difficult or dangerous”
"Courage." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2017. In To Kill a Mockingbird Scout learns about courage from Mrs. Dubose, Jem, and Boo Radley. Courage maybe defined as above but I believe that it has more definitions depending on the situation for example Mrs. Dubose fights her addiction shows a different form of courage than Jem when he fights Bob Ewell and Boo Radley when he fights the religion forced on him by his brother.

Jem shows courage in his fight with Bob Ewell in the following examples from the book “someone rolled against me and I felt Jem. He was up like a fash of lighning and pulled me with him.” (Harper Lee 262) in this quote

Jem is fighting with Bob who is trying to kill him and Scout. He is facing something that not many kids his age have to think about and he is doing it in the dark. The ability to deal with a situation like that shows that Jem has remarkable courage. Another example of Jem showing courage is when he is in front of the jailhouse to make the men there go away as in the quote “Atticus stood trying to make Jem mind him. ‘I ain’t going,’ was his steady reply to Atticus’s threats, requests, and finally, ‘please take them home.’” (Harper Lee 152) in this excerpt we see that Jem for the first time in his life has stood up to his father.

Boo Radley shows courage when fighting the religion of his family.

One of the first examples of this is when he fixes Jem’s pants “‘when I went back they were folded across the fence…’ ‘theyd been sewed up.’” (Harper Lee 58) after Jem had trespassed in the Radley garden and had been shot at by Nathan Radley. Boo Radley decided to fix the intruder’s pants and go against his family. Later Boo fights Bob Ewell to save the Finch kids “Still but for a man breathing heavily, breathing heavily and staggering. I thought he went to the tree and leaned against it. He coughed violently, a sobbing, bone-shaking cough.” (Harper Lee 262) Boo having just killing Bob was understandably throwing up. Boo showed courage by killing someone something that was totally taboo in his religion for some kids he barely

knew.

Mrs. Dubose is an example of courage because she is determined to stop using morphine even if it kills her. “‘It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.’” (Harper Lee 112) in this quote Mrs. Dubose is addicted to morphine and wants to break her addiction even if it kills her, which it did. “I pulled Jem’s sleeve. He looked at me, then at the bed. Her head made its regular sweep toward us, and Jem said, ‘Mrs. Dubose, are you all right?’ She did not hear him.” (Harper Lee 106) this quote shows that Mrs. Dubose’s addiction ran very deep and was very hard to get rid of.

Scout learns about courage from Mrs.

Dubose, Jem, and Boo Radley. Jem shows the courage to do what is necessary, Boo Radley is an example of courage because he fights the religion imposed on him by his family, and Mrs, Dubose was courageous because she continued fighting even though she knew she was beat from the beginning. Although the definition of courage would work for each of these examples they are not the same form of courage. In the case of Jem, he did what he had to to save his sister at the time. With Mrs. Dubose she faced the excruciating pain of withdrawals to break free of her morphine addiction. In Boo Radley’s example he rejected the way of life of everyone he knew to live the life he

wanted.