Tolerance and Courage: Atticus

"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."

- Atticus Finch, Chapter eleven, page 116.

Atticus Finch is a very well respected man in the old town of Maycomb, Alabama, and often tries to teach his two kids, Jean Louis Finch and Jeremy Finch what it means to have courage and tolerance. Compared to the over-glorification that children often give to jobs such as a dump truck driver, his children often see his job as a lawyer as lame and boring. What is not exactly known to his children is the amount of tolerance he has for everyone in the town, especially when you look at the events surrounding the Tom Robinson Case. Even when the entire town is ready to lynch a Negro man, Atticus believes that he could never truly face his children again if he didn't take up the case. This is because Atticus tends to lead and teach his children by example and he would not be proud of lesson he would be teaching. He once told his two children that "You never really understand a person until you consider things from their point of view... Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." which only further explains the magnitude of tolerance and respect he is willing to give to everyone in the town. Atticus Finch exemplifies the idea of courage as well through out the book. Even though he has a pretty good Idea of the outcome of the trial, because of the all white jury and the injustices that African Americans faced prior to the Civil Rights Movements, Atticus was willing to see the trial through no matter what obstacles he faced. This shows that through his criteria for what it means to be courageous, he has achieved exactly what he was aiming to be.