In Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a
Mockingbird (TKAM), Jem learns about real courage during the time he spends
with Mrs. Dubose.
Mrs. Dubose is an elderly member of the
community, and the children must pass her home when they go into
town.
We
could do nothing to please her. If I said as sunnily as I could, 'Hey, Mrs. Dubose,' I
would receive for an answer, 'Don't you say hey to me, you ugly girl! You say good
afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!'...Countless evenings Atticus would find Jem furious at
something Mrs. Dubose had said when we went by.'Easy does
it, son,' Atticus would say. 'She's an old lady and she's ill. You just hold your head
high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it's your job not to let her make you
mad.'
On one particular
afternoon, Mrs. Dubose starts on the children, and then nastily insults Atticus for
taking Tom' Robinson's case. Scout relates that she is used to hearing insults about
Atticus regarding Tom Robinson's defense, but this was the first time it had come from
an adult. Jem is furious, but they continue into town, buy their toys, and turn for
home. When they reach Mrs. Dubose's house, Jem grabs Scout's new
baton.
He did
not calm down until he had cut the tops of every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until
the ground was littered with green buds and leaves. He bent my baton against his knee,
snapped it in two and threw it
down.
Of course, when Atticus
comes home, he calls for Jem and his "voice was like a winter wind." He has Scout's
baton in one hand and camellia buds in the other; it is obvious he knows what has
happened. He demands that Jem go to see Mrs. Dubose. When the boy returns, he explains
that Mrs. Dubose wants him to come to her house each day to read to her for a month.
Atticus readily agrees.
And so Jem and Scout go each day.
They are released from the reading time when the alarm clock next to Mrs. Dubose's bed
goes off. After about a month, Atticus stops by to visit the elderly woman, and they
discuss the time. It is at that point that Scout realizes that each
day they have been staying later and later before the alarm sounds. Atticus agrees with
Mrs. Dubose that even though the month is up, Jem shall read for one more week. The
children return the following Monday, but the alarm clock no longer rings: she just
dismisses them when it's time. Finally the last day comes, and they are released for
good.
"The spring," as Scout says, "was a good one..." and
she describes the lengthened days of playing. One evening the phone rings and Atticus
goes down to Mrs. Dubose's house for a few minutes. He returns shortly with a candy box
and announces that Mrs. Dubose is dead, but then he explains that everyday Jem read,
Mrs. Dubose was trying to end her addiction to morphine, a pain medicine she was taking.
The twisted body and face (her "fits") they had seen were signs of her suffering through
withdrawal and her pain, taking her morphine only after the ringing
of the clock. Each day she had gone a little longer. She finally died as she wanted, not
without agony, but without
addiction.
Atticus tells
Jem:
...son I
told you that if you hadn't lost your head I'd have made you go read to her...I wanted
you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with
a gun...It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you
see it through no matter what...Mrs. Dubose won...she died beholden to nothing...She was
the bravest person I ever knew.
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