…I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (Warner Books, 1960) 112.
This is a passage from, To Kill a Mockingbird, where Atticus Finch tells his son, Jem, what courage is. This instruction arises in response to the death of Mrs. Dubose, who in spite of the suffering involved, had devoted her final days to overcoming her addiction to morphine. In the end she died free.
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.”
– Mark Twain
Thanks for posting this, Recalcitrant. I’ve come back to look at it over the weeks and been thinking a lot about it.
I loved To Kill a Mockingbird as a kid. I read it so many times it fell apart … the civil rights movement was so important and the main characters in this book were my age when it came out in 1960. This book was set in the 1930s, but it came out at the time of the civil rights movement. It’s message transcends across from prejudice to life and courage and faith and steadfastness in general, as evidenced by the above-quoted passage regarding Mrs. Dubose.
To Kill a Mockingbird is not only a well-written page-turner with a plot you just can’t stop reading, there is so much interwoven in it that you can read it again and again and get more out of it.
Mrs. Dubose was not a major character, but even the minor characters and sub-plots were important. Mrs. Dubose, not a recreational drug user, got hooked on morphine through an illness but she wanted to die free of it. Courage and determination. To Kill a Mockingbird with its main plot about racial prejudice has several subplots that relate to the main theme, and the whole book comes down to courage and determination and doing what’s right and standing up for what you believe is right, no matter how hard.
Back to the civil rights movement, as a kid in the 1960s, the civil rights participants were inspirational to me and have remained so throughout my life. Almost irreverently, they have been in my mind in this current situation. I said “almost irreverently” because our situation is not comparable to what they were faced with and I do not want to disrespect them. But I do feel that we can gain inspiration from them.
Black Americans fought last century to have the rights they were entitled to *as* Americans, which they most certainly were entitled to. If your consulate is trying to prevent you from exercising your right *not* to be American, remember these people who fought for their civil rights. US federal law actually was on their side. US federal law is on your side, too. These people who fought for their civil rights had to risk their lives, and some of them lost their lives, to get US law exercised. Thank goodness, we don’t have to risk our lives. Still, it can be tough when an US govt official tries to block you from exercising your right to expatriate. So, remember Bull Connor did not turn them around . We, too, shall overcome!
@pacifica777- very eloquently said. Your love for the book certainly comes through. And I am glad that in these trying times that you could have found encouragement in rereading this short passage.