Boo Radley Courageous

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Courage in simple words means an act of bravery. Certainly, that is not just it. Courage takes a bigger picture of an act of bravery. “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” is how Nelson Mandela once explained it. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem and Scout get taught quite a bit about what it means to have courage. They first believe that having courage means that you can shoot a gun but through of the actions of Boo Radley, Mrs.Dubose, and Atticus, they learn that it means so much more. Jem and scout are taught a valuable life lesson about courage through the characters in the story.
Arthur “Boo” Radley is courageous in revealing …show more content…

Like Boo Radley, Mrs Dubose 's courage is not plainly seen by Scout and Jem at the beginning, but her couragesness teaches the children something they will never forget. For Scout, Mrs. Dubose is a brash, nasty woman who takes over their afternoons after Jem goes crazy on her camellias. It 's not until after she dies that Scout and Jem get a sense of what 's going on behind the drool and venom. Mrs. Dubose is a morphine addict who had vowed to go clean before she died, and enlisted Jem and Scout (without their knowledge) to keep her off the stuff for longer and longer periods of time. Atticus tells the kids the lesson he hopes they 've learned from her. He said "’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. It 's when you know you 're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.’"(Lee 149) Atticus uses the example of Mrs. Dubose 's fight against her morphine addiction as a teaching tool to show the children that it is not a man with a gun who is courageous, but a small, old lady who has the strength of character to fight even when she knows her chances of …show more content…

Though both Boo and Mrs.Dubose are both influential to the children, Atticus teaches them the most about courage. It is through defending black man Tom Robinson that he teaches Jem and Scout the importance of standing up for what you believe in. Atticus knew that there was little chance of acquitting Tom but he believed that he could somehow make a difference in the way that black people were prosecuted. He realizes that it would put both his children and himself at risk but Atticus knows that helping Tom is the right thing to do and thus, carries out the job.This is an act so courageous that his brother compares him to Christ by making the comment "let this cup pass from you, eh?" (Chapter 9). The children look up to Atticus and learn from his acts of bravery. His teaching lead to Jem and Scout performing acts of courage themselves and none of it could have been possible if it weren 't for Atticus.
Jem and Scout learned about what it means to have courage from the actions of the others. It shown to them that everyday people can have courage, even people that are not expected to. Whether it be a fragile old woman, the towns cooke, or their father, they come to learn what courage really means. Though they first thought bravery was just being able to shoot a gun, the realize that the only weapon that is important is courage which is armed in

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