Atticus Finch Courageousness Quotes

Courageousness is evidently shown throughout Harper Lee’s famous novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Out of the plethora of brave people, Atticus Finch and Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose are whom I believe to be one of the most heroic characters. Their valiance plays a huge role in the main storyline as it creates more depth in all of the characters.

In Harper Lee’s book, there is a character, Atticus Finch, who is a caucasian lawyer as well as a single father of a daughter and son, Scout and Jem, that are around the age of 10. He is generally logical and keeps his composure under stressful situations. Atticus voluntarily decides to take up the case of Tom Robinson, an African-American man who had been accused of raping a white woman. Word of Atticus

A couple of relatives were visiting and talking to Scout when one said, “‘[Francis:] Grandma says it’s bad enough he lets you all run wild, but now he’s turned out to be a n-lover we’ll never be able to walk the streets of Maycomb agin. He’s ruinin’ the family, that’s what he’s doin’.’” (110). It is clear that Atticus being the defendant of an African-American man during a racial time in the world had discontented everyone in the town, his own family other than Scout and Jem clearly expresses their dislike. Atticus knows that taking this case would mean losing, yet because he believes in the equality of the people, he still decided to take on the case. He shows this when he says, “‘Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,’” (101). Atticus knows the outcome will end in failure and that everyone is against it, but he had bravely chosen to take on the African-American man, Tom

Henry Lafayette Dubose. Mrs. Dubose is an elderly woman who lived alone a few houses up from the Finches. This meant that Scout and Jem would always have to walk by her porch as they went into town, where she would constantly shout them out over tiny things. One evening, Scout would walk by and say, “‘Hey, Mrs. Dubose,’ I would receive for an answer, ‘Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl! You say good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!’” (133). Mrs. Dubose is shown as an angry and cranky old woman, publicly disliked by Scout and Jem being described as “vicious.” The situation turns when Scout and Jem are forced by their father to read for Mrs. Dubose daily for a month. The kids leave once the alarm clock rings, and day by day, the clock begins ringing later and later. Unbeknownst to the children, the clock is for when it is the time Mrs. Dubose would take her medicine, morphine. After Mrs. Dubose's passing, Atticus explains to the kids that “‘Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict, she took it as a pain-killer for years… …She said she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that’s what she did.’” (147-148). Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose is a brave and courageous soul for wanting to break her morphine addiction just before she had passed. She knew that going through the withdrawals would put her in large amounts of pain and agony, but she wished to pass fully sober without the effects of