To Kill a Mockingbird Essay

The world’s greatest innovator Steve Jobs once said, ”Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” Whenever someone explains what courage is, a person’s definition would be about overcoming fear or having bravery. Despite that, courage can be an individual handling what society is asking from them and going by what their hearts say and dealing with their own problems. This concept comes into play in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, where several of Lee’s characters experience courage by going against societal means. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee connects the characters going through their own conviction to show her theme that courage is going against society’s beliefs and handling one’s situation.

In the first part of the novel, Lee starts to show courage though several characters that are against society's wishes. This goes true to Atticus Finch, with him trying to defend Tom Robinson for raping a white woman, even though society believes that he should not have taken the case in the first place. When Scout asks Atticus why he’s taking the case in the first place, he gives her his reasonings, “The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this country in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again” (100). Given the reason by Atticus, he is taking the case to hold his pride and respect of the community even though society believes that Atticus should not have taken the case in the first place. This is a perfect example of courage with Atticus going against his communities beliefs and for him to handle his own situation with the case he is ...

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...age, he goes against society’s beliefs into thinking that not only should Atticus be able to defend Tom Robinson, but also believing that his entailments could never have been bad as they should have been. His courage was also brought up by the mention of his son, with him dealing with the fact that he won’t be able to feed his family, let alone his own son who helps him in his farming. Near the conclusion of the book, there was one more critical character that showed courage that goes against society’s beliefs. Dolphus Raymond, known to be as the town drunk, showed a side of himself that was never before seen by anyone at all until Scout and Dill actually meant him. He starts to explain as to why he pretended to become the town drunk, “Some folks - like the way I live. Now I could say the hell with ‘em, I don’t care

Works Cited

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee