To Kill A Mockingbird Moral Courage Research Paper

The Power of Moral Courage The novel To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee. Nelle Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, a town very similar in ways to Maycomb, the setting of To Kill a Mockingbird. Like Scout’s father, Harper Lee’s father was also a lawyer of the town. Lee’s childhood friend novelist Truman Capote had given her the inspiration to create the character Dill. Harper Lee had mention that To Kill a Mockingbird was not just intended to portray her childhood home but rather a nonspecific town in the south. “People are people anywhere you put them,” she had declared in her interview. Courage is the ability to be able to do something that terrifies oneself, for a person to be courageous means that they are willing to put their life at risk
for someone.
“Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world look on.” (La Rochefoucauld) In To Kill a Mockingbird, many citizens of Maycomb county had demonstrated moral courage. Atticus Finch had demonstrated moral courage as well as Ms. Maudie. To Kill a Mockingbird revolves around the life young Scout, her brother Jem, and their widowed father, Atticus, a small town attorney respected for his honesty and intelligence. Part of the novel centers around Atticus as he is trying to defend Tom Robinson, a black man, accused of raping a white women. Along the way of the novel Atticus had manage to help many of his neighbor, stopping a Lynching mob, saving the day with his expert marksmanship, and still manage to deliver justices with a quiet and calm integrity. Atticus may be a fictional character in the novel but he is honored as a symbol, in 1977 the Alabama State Bar had created a monument for in his honors in
Monroeville, Alabama. Atticus is seen as a typical dad, Scout who thinks that Atticus is a little older than most of Maycomb’s dad. For example, Atticus wears glasses and read instead of hunting and fishing like most dads. One day, a mad dog had appeared out of nowhere and was seen wandering down the street by Scout and Jem. Calpurnia call for Atticus alerting him of the problem, so when sheriff Heck Tate and Atticus arrive to the scene, Heck had ask Atticus to shoot the dog because they use to call him “One-shot Finch,” much to his children's surprise. Atticus shot the dog right in the head instantly killing it. This action by Atticus shows moral courage because Atticus was willing to kill something, Atticus is someone who would not want to kill it. Atticus shot the dog because he knows that it was sick and sooner or later if it gets far enough it was going to hurt someone. Atticus wanted to save the dog so that it doesn’t experience the pain anymore. By using the conflict of this event it heightens the sense of risk and danger that would occur if the dog was to be kept alive. Giving up one’s life for a complete stranger who is in the same situation is not a task anyone that everyone can do. In the The Man in the Water written by Roger Rosenblatt based on a true incident that occurred on January 13, 1982, of a plane crash. Air Florida Flight 90 took off from Washington National Airport, that later crashed into the Potomac River, the accident was caused by the ice on the plane’s wings which crashed due to the damage caused to the surroundings. There were seventy-eight people on the plane and only five had managed to survive with the help of rescuers. In the essay The Man in The Water, Roger Rosenblatt demonstrated moral courage by showing the bravery of the rescuers and giving the setting which helps heighten the bravery demonstrated and the danger of the situation.
In the The Man in The Water, the characters showed moral courage because he had endangered his own life to save victims of the plane crash. Lenny Skutnik, a twenty-eight-year-old, who is an employee of the Congressional Budget Office, had jumped into the freezing water to save an injured woman.“It’s something I never thought I would do”, and “somebody had to go in the water” (Skutnik). Lenny have an option to not jump into the freezing water to save anyone, but he chose to do it. As a result, he choose between watching the woman drown in the freezing water or jumping in it risking his life to save her, he chose to save the her from drowning. Besides Lenny, there was another hero that showed absolutely relentless courage was a victim itself in the plane crash. Even though that man is unknown, he was passing life-lines to the five other survivors ignoring himself. As described by Eugene Windsor, “In a mass casualty, you’ll find people like him,” “But I’ve never seen one with that commitment.” (Windsor). The man Donald Usher and Eugene Windsor had described was around his fifties, he was so committed to saving lives that he drowned and was not to be found when the helicopter came back to save him. He showed relentless courage to the people watching the news and it had brought many to tears because the man was never to be identify.
In The Man in The Water and To Kill a Mockingbird both characters had demonstrated moral courage by showing the bravery of the rescuers and the killing of the dog that ended its misery. Additionally, Rosenblatt emphasized the rescuers with moral courage by what they did and used the setting which help increase the morality. Moral courage is something many people think they can easily do, but in reality, it is a hard thing to accomplish.