To Kill A Mockingbird Moral Courage

Harper Lee once wrote that “Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what”. Moral courage means doing the right thing despite the risk of any consequences. Anyone can have moral courage, no matter who you are. Many authors often use different literary elements to develop themes in their writings. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses the literary elements mood and imagery to teach her audience about doing the right thing or moral courage.

Using mood, Lee creates an atmosphere of tension, surprise, and sadness in the novel. For example, Atticus one of the main characters in the novel is asked to shoot and kill a rabid dog. This event in the novel is

The rifle cracked” (page 127). Another example is during the Tom Robinson trial, Tom Robinson is a black man and he was accused of rape. The tense mood in the courtroom of the trial continued as the people waited for the consequences Robinson will get. As the time goes on, “the feeling grew until the atmosphere in the courtroom was exactly the same as a cold February morning(...)” (page 281). Atticus showed moral courage defending a black man when the people in the courtroom continue to wait for the news of guilty. Lee gave Tom Robinson a sad outcome which leads to courage. In the novel, Atticus stated that Robinson is dead to his sister, Aunt Alexandra, and it created a really depressing and sad mood. Lee made the death sound really horrible and in a way to show moral courage in the characters. Atticus described that the guards “...fired a few shots in the air, then to kill. They got him just as he went over the fence. They said if he’d had two good arms he’d have made it, he was moving that fast. Seventeen bullet holes in

Mood gave the novel tension, surprise, and sadness which help make the novel more interesting and a meaningful theme. Imagery in the novel created a unique sense of language and created better images of moral courage of the characters. Harper Lee’s theme of moral courage in her novel To Kill A Mockingbird can be compared in reality in the same way. In reality, most people are treated unequally and the history of slaves are both compared with similarity in the novel. Moral courage can be anywhere, like in books and even in the real