Zoe Eickmeier Mrs. Klein Pre-AP ELA 31 March 2023 What Makes a Hero? Most heroes share a collection of characteristics that makes them heroic. The most important characteristics of a hero are courage and determination. Fredric Douglas and Atticus Finch are both excellent examples of heroes. Fredric Douglas and Atticus Finch both show traits such as courage, determination, and kind hearts. Through their actions they inspire others to have these same traits. One thing that sets heroes apart from average people is courage. Courage, the ability to endure fear or pain with strength. One of the most difficult things Fredrick Douglass had to do was escape slavery he felt,”The intense desires, now felt, to be free, quickened my present favorable circumstances, brought me to the determination to act as well as to think and speak.” (Douglass 95). Douglas’s need to be free helped him fuel a passion to be intellectually and physically free. Even the harsh conditions of slavery Fredrick Douglass endured helped him to find strength within his own hopeless situation. Now turning to Atticus Finch, who perfectly contrasts the people surrounding him who are “perfectly willing to let him wreck his health doing what …show more content…
Determination means trying to reach a goal no matter what setbacks are in place. ”I was ready to work by night as well as by day”( Douglass 116). Determination is demonstrated in the text by the effort Fredrick Douglass is willing to put into freeing himself and others of slavery. Atticus shows determination in many ways, one of the more prominent ways being how he defended Tom Robbinson knowing he’d lose but he still put time and effort into the case. “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” (Lee 87). It is alluded to in the text that Atticus will put 100% of his effort into what he believes in even with no guarantee of