Examples Of Moral Courage In To Kill A Mockingbird

One lesson in the book that I feel Jem learns as a part of growing up is moral courage. Atticus once told Jem that “courage is [not] a man with a gun in his hand. It 's when you know you 're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” Jem had always seen bravery as important and often tried to show the courage in him but only learnt about what moral courage really was through a series events that took place in the book.
In the first few chapters of the book where Jem and Scout were young children, he accepted a dare to touch the wall of Boo Radley’s house because he thought that was what real courage was, accepting dares. Although he had heard the stories told of Boo Radley and was terrified by them, it did not stop him from going ahead to accept the dare because he thought that it would determine how much courage he had. Also, he knew the rumours of how if one touched anything near Boo Radley 's house, one would die. However, Jem seemed

Jem further understood the true meaning of moral courage when he saw Atticus defending Tom Robinson, a black man. Although Atticus was hugely outnumbered and even cornered by Mr Cunningham and some other people, he did not back down from them. Instead, he seemed even more determined to win the case and prove Tom Robinson 's innocence to all of Maycomb County. Almost everyone in Maycomb County had criticised Atticus and his children for taking up the case of defending Tom Robinson and they were even called "nigger lovers" by many. At first, Jem did not understand why his father chose to defend Tom Robinson when he knew that people would whisper and gossip about it and that the possibility of him winning the case was very low. Later on, after he saw his father bravely defending Tom Robinson, he learnt that an example of someone with moral courage was his father, who understood that just because one was “licked a hundred years before [they] started is no reason for [them] not to try