Langston Hughes Paragraph

Atticus’s Belief that Ms. Dubose is a Great Lady

Atticus believes that Ms. Dubose is a great lady because she had the courage not to give up on her life. Ms. Dubose had been diagnosed to live for only a brief couple of more months. She could of conformed to normality and took the morpheme, but she broke herself off of it, so that she would leave the world “beholden to nobody,” In this excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird it shows how Atticus believes that Ms. Dubose is courageous not to give up.

“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. Ms. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views she died beholden of nothing or nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew”

This quote proves that Atticus believed she had courage because it shows that Ms. Dubose had the courage that Atticus believed in. This courage was not “a man with a gun in his hand”, but the courage that even when death stares you in the eye, instead of just conceding to it, you decide to make the most of it. Courage is doing something that frightens one. Even though frightened by death Ms. Dubose never gives up on her life or takes the easy way out by consuming morpheme. When Atticus says “real courage… instead of… a man with a gun” he means that biggest and toughest soldier is not always the most brave. In this quote Atticus talks of what courage really is “It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway.” This quote means that even if your going to die, it takes real courage is not to lay your head in the sand and die, but finish what you want to do in your life and die with no regrets. Ms. Dubose died “beholden of nothing or nobody.” This quote means that Ms. Dubose died owing nobody anything. Atticus believed that it took real courage to make amends with all of her regrets throughout her life