Fear and Courage

Fear and Courage:

            Boo Radley was known as a person that would harm someone if they got near him in any way, (which ended up not to be true) but Jem, Scout and Dill were courageous enough to play games and walk in front of the Radley house almost every day. For people to be afraid of walking even close to the Radley house, jem showed a lot of courage to touch the Radley house on a dare. “ Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful" (Lee 18). Jem had both fear and courage running through his mind when he ran past the Radley’s gate, and got past the fact that he might get caught.

            Another key example of fear, that was a main component of this novel, was the fear that ran through Mayella’s brain when she accused an innocent man of rape. Mayella did not seem like a bad, cruel person from the description that the readers read from the book, yet she still was the main cause of an innocent man’s death. Bob Ewell was said to beat her daughter, and when she knew that she would get another one of those beatings from her father, she wanted to prevent it by letting fear overcome her moral self and let a man die for no logical reason. “ He does tollable, ‘cept when-“ “except when? [Atticus replied]” “Mayella looked at her father, who was sitting with his chair tipped against the railing. He sat up straight and waited for her to answer" (Lee 245). This quote was crucial in the Tom Robinson case because a doubt was set into peoples minds about whether or not Tom Robinson was the one to beat Mayella or if it was her own father. Fear of getting beat by her father caused Mayella to stumble during this question, which she eventually ended up lying to the whole courtroom. Fear can often change the option one chooses unknowingly which happened in this situation to Mayella.