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Virtues In 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

733 Words3 Pages

James Park
Professor High
Films of Moral Struggle
9/16
Critical Response 1
In the Nicomachean Ethics Book 1-3. Aristotle clarifies that there are two types of virtue, thought (intellectual) and moral, and the relationship between nature and habit. Virtue of thought is the knowledge gained from teachings and has the prerequisites of experience and time while, the virtue of character is the result of habituation. Therefore, it is safe to conclude that the virtues of character are not innate in us and is developed by habituation. Anything that occurs in nature in a specific behavioral pattern acts in such a manner that it is impossible to be altered to behave in another fashion. In other words, it is safe to say that the virtues of character that …show more content…

In To Kill a Mockingbird, this statement has a special meaning because much of the previous generation in the book possesses the hatred and racism that stems back to the Civil War and beyond. The children in this film can be represented as bridges from the previous generation to a new generation. Atticus purposely raises his children strictly that he hopes will allow them to be a bridge in which hatred and racism are exterminated. As stated before, there are virtues that we acquire by having previously habituated them. Another example of this is the habituation of the citizens of a specific city to conform along with the city’s laws. This the goal of every legislator and makes the difference between a good and bad political system. This example supports the representation of the adult characters due to the fact that they were habituated, with regards to the time period, into considering each other as “different” due to the color of their skins. The state of character arises from the repetition of similar activities, such as conforming to laws. Aristotle firmly states that it is important that to acquire one sort of habit or another, right from our youth. This supports Atticus’s intentions of burning the bridges of the past in order to raise his children, the new youth, to eradicate the grief of the previous

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