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Mrs. Dubose In To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

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In “To Kill A Mockingbird” some characters are not who they seem to be. A congenial example would be Mrs.Dubose. Mrs.Dubose is introduced in Chapter 11 as a character that everyone stays away from. She is cranky and people believe she keeps a gun with her at all times. Both Jem and Scout also believe these rumors. but there is always a different story. One detail people did not know about Mrs.Dubose is that she was a morphine addict. After Jem ruined her garden, and he was punished by Atticus to read to Mrs. Dubose every day for a month. Atticus knew that Mrs. Dubose was going through a withdrawal and in the the book it states “ I’d have made you go read to anyways. It may have been some distraction”. Jem then realized that was what caused all her …show more content…

Furthermore, the only reason she was cranky was because she was going through withdrawal. Withdrawal occurs when you stop taking a drug and your body craves it even more. Its pin can feel like a hammer hitting you all over your body. “Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict, said Atticus. She took it as a pain-killer for years”, and the withdrawal was harder for her. Mrs. Dubose could have “spent the rest of her life and die without so much agony, but she was too contrary”. She did not want pay or stay behold to anything on this world. Mrs. Dubose had the goal to “break herself of it before she died and that’s what she did. Therefore, Mrs. Dubose suffered a lot, but left like a bird flying for the first time, happily. Not to mention she was caring, brave, and courageous with what she was going through. She never broke her promise to herself and left a mark on the Finch family, especially Jem. Atticus had known about Mrs. Dubose’s problem, which is why he let her go with all the mean comments about him.in the book it states “I wanted to show you see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand”. Atticus wanted to show that real courage is not shown by strength but by

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