What is courage? The dictionary defines it as, “the ability to do something that frightens one”. But the belief that someone is doing something to frighten another seems inaccurate. We’ve all grown up knowing courage as an intangible fire that only comes from within and it helps guide you when you’re feeling doubtful or scared. This type of true courage is displayed by Piggy from the novel, Lord of the Flies, Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from Birmingham Jail and Tim O'Brien in the short story, On the Rainy River. Whether it’s standing up for equal rights or laying down your life, courage is finding all your bravery and unleashing it on any challenge that steps in your way. In the novel Lord of the Flies, Ralph represents courage in …show more content…
wrote a very famous letter while imprisoned at Birmingham Jail called, Letter from Birmingham Jail. It took a lot of courage to write a letter like this because in those days, not many people would hesitate to kill him for his statements. He responds to a group of clergymen who accuse he and his followers of being outsiders, reckless and inciting violence. King’s letter is carefully constructed to capture the suffering of the community of people he represented. Within his letter he writes, “But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you’". Here King uses pathos to build his ethos, he places himself among Jesus Christ which builds his ethos and since the initial letter writers were clergymen, it connects to pathos. That is just one of the many effective passages from King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. This shows a lot of courage because most people choose to fight fire with fire but he chooses to fight hatred with love. This took a lot of courage because many people of the black community wanted to riot and attack the racists and the white community already was against him. Given that knowledge, there was a lot of pressure on King to make