Devin Lona

Mr. Goldman
English 1
03 December 2018
The Courageous Bird that Sung a Song
In Harper Lee’s ​To Kill a Mockingbird​, Lee represents courage by showing how
Miss.Dubose fought her battles with her sickness and that also showed physical strength and the
way she showed courage was when Jem went into Miss.Dubose yard and ruin all of her flowers
and plants. Jem also showed inner strength and the way Jem showed inner strength was how he
had to go to Miss.Dubose everyday and read to her. He didn't want to but he had to anyway and
he showed his inner strength by showing up everyday with a smile on his face and not giving her
any problems. ​In To Kill a Mockingbird​ Harper Lee showed a lot of ethics. Ethics is a branch of
philosophy on how people should act in general sense or in a specific or in a circumstance. The
way she shows ethics in this story is in Atticus Jem and Scout's father. The reason she uses him
as ethics is because his character is a more calm, humble person in the story. Atticus does not
brag about his abbities and the things he can do. For example when Tim Johnson (neighborhood
dog) was on the loose Jem and Scout saw him and they thought he was sick but he had rabies and
so they had to put him down but they didn't have anyone to do it so they called Atticus and he
got to the house with the sheriff but the sheriff didn't have good aim but he knew something
about Atticus that the kids didn't know about him. Atticus had the best aim in the town so he had
Atticus shoot the dog but nobody knew that he had good aim because he didn't brag about his
abilities. In chapter 11 of ​To Kill a Mockingbird ​Jem and Scout would always get harassed by
Miss.Dubose. She would always say cruel things about their father Atticus and how he supported
African Americans. Then one day on there way to the city Miss.Dubose said something very
cruel to Jem and Scout. Scout showed a lot of forbearance towards the situation that she just
ignored what happened. But Jem on the other hand was so angry about the situation that on there
way back from the city he decided to get revenge on Miss.Dubose so he got the baton that he
bought and went into her yard and started hitting her plants with the baton and taking them out of
the soil. He caused so much destruction to her plants and he was so angry that when he was done
he got the metal baton and broke it on his knee. After Atticus got home from work Miss.Dubose
told him what happened and he walked into his house very angry he screamed Jems name and
forced him to go to her house and say sorry to her and ask what he can do to make it up to her.
Miss.Dubose told him that he has to go to her house and read to her he didn't want to do this but
he had to. This was her punishment to him for what he did. What Jem did was very unethical
because he didn't show any forbearance and what Miss.Dubose did was very ethical because she
didn't physically punish him but verbally. Here she also showed inner strength because she could
have showed how strong she is and hurt him physically but she hurt him internally and took his
free time away. Lee uses the phrase “a man with a gun in his hand” because she is trying to show
how strong someone looks with a weapon in hand and how much of a coward they can be and
she is trying to say that no matter how strong you look or are the inner strength will never get
beat by someone with physical strength. When Lee says Dubose “won” she means she won the
fight that she's been fighting for years she fought her addiction and won she was addicted to pain
pills and she cut those off knowing she was going to die but she fought her addiction. Since
Dubose “died beholden to nothing and nobody” this represents courage because she was
courageous enough to hold zero regrets against anyone and she knew that she was gonna die
soon so she let everything and everyone go. The moral of inner strength is that inner strength you
need it to conquer anything and everything and you also need it to be courageous. No matter how
physically strong you are you wont need that to physical strength to accomplish your fear. For
example when atticus shot the dog he is a lawyer a lawyer shooting a dog shouldn't the sheriff
shoot it the one who was trained to shoot that shows how inner strength works because the
sheriff was physically strong but had no inner strength but Atticus did. Inner strength is
important to the story because in the story everyone has inner strength from when Atticus went
to go save Miss.Maudie's chair from her burning house and save her most sentimental thing to
when the kids tried sneaking into Arthur Radley's house and giving him the note all of these
situations everyone in the story needed inner strength to accomplish the things they wanted to. I
agree with Lee's definition of courage because she explained how you need that one push of
inner strength to accomplish some things that you needed to accomplish.