Have you ever been wavering on the verge of either following your beliefs or doing what your emotions cause you to do? If you remained on the side of following your beliefs, it shows that there is a large amount of integrity in your character. If you happen to witness somebody hurting or in pain would you either watch and walk past them, although you clearly notice that they are in pain, like everybody else or would you help them because they are in need, despite the consequences. Hopefully you are the type of person who will listen to their conscience and help someone, on the grounds that, they need it, and that takes an abundance of courage to accomplish. Integrity and listening to one's conscience are two crucial characteristics that every person needs to either exude, have or acquire. …show more content…
Our conscience is a moral guide that we are equipped with and use to determine whether to do right or wrong and to follow the rules or do what you know is right. The conscience of a person is also what holds them back from doing things that they should not do because the person thinks about the consequences and the outcome if they had followed through with their original plans. For example, in “To Kill a Mockingbird” when Cecil Jacobs provoked Scout, Harper Lee described how Scout stood her ground and did not fight him, “I drew a bead on him remembered what Atticus had said then dropped my fist and walked away... It was the first time I ever walked away from a fight” (Lee, 102).If you have ever had a difficult challenge or obstacle suddenly placed in front of you and you must overcome it in order to succeed, your task, then during your journey when you feel like giving up, your conscience makes you think about what would happen if you quit “And so hold on when there is nothing in you/Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!” (Kipling,
Showing compassion towards someone may be difficult, especially if one has a preexisting bias against that person. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee explores this topic, including how to decide if one is worthy of compassion. The citizens of Maycomb can be quick to judge anyone who is “different”, without fully understanding that person’s backstory. Mayella Ewell is one character who is often subject to this judgment, specifically during Tom Robinson’s trial. During this eventful period, she gains lots of negative attention and is shown no compassion. Because the people of Maycomb see in “black and white”, they are unable and unwilling to fathom that there is another side to the story, thus depriving Mayella of the sympathy she deserves. Mayella Ewell is worthy of compassion because her father is abusive, she does all of the work at home, and she does not deserve her family’s poor reputation.
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." A quote by Atticus Finch a loving single father of two children in a novel by Harper Lee. The story takes place during the 1930s and the Great Depression, in a small (made-up) town called Maycomb Alabama. Scout now an adult is narrating what she experienced and felt in ages 6-9. She gives details of her family, school, and just everything she goes through. In the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, she also talks about her brother Jem, who starts as a careless young boy that slowly starts getting more mature. Jem changing throughout the story helps show a little bit more of how the story develops and why character development is important in making a good novel.
Black and white, right and wrong; do decisions that simple and clear even exist? Does a decision ever mean gaining everything without giving anything up? Many characters in To Kill A Mockingbird are forced to make difficult, heart wrenching decisions that have no clear right answer. Harper Lee presents many of these important decisions in To Kill A Mockingbird as ethical dilemmas, or situations that require a choice between two difficult alternatives. Both of these alternatives have unpleasant aspects and question morals and ethics. A person is put in an awkward position, with their mind saying contradicting things. These dilemmas are presented in many different ways. The
In books, many characters go through moral development. The book To Kill A Mockingbird shows many examples of characters that go through this development and characters that help others develop. While there are many different characters in the book, the focus is on the development of Jem and Scout Finch with the help of Atticus and Calpurnia. The kids are introduced when they are young and over the span of the book, the adults teach and help them, making them have a different understanding of the world only two years later. With the guidance of Atticus and Cal, Jem and Scout go through a big moral change.
“Integrity is choosing your thoughts and actions based on values rather than personal gain. ”-Anonymous. In order to become a person of integrity it is clear that a person must have the courage to act on his values. This means that courage and integrity go hand in hand.
Self-perception is something which can definitely harm anybody. In today’s world, there are many people who like the idea of just aiming for the conclusion and who don’t even think of what the consequences might be, they never even think of how the thing that they are doing might affect others. This can usually occur in many places like high schools. Students say stuff about their friends(rumors) which might usually hurt somebody else. These people are always dodging the reality and are never even thinking about the future. Making such sort of decisions about someone is ridiculous. “Point of View” is something which should be taken into account. Without knowing anyone and assuming who they are is not only wrong but is also hurtful. It’s like assuming someone's race or assuming how much they earn or simply just accusing someone of being a criminal without even knowing the reality. The idea is not to harm anybody and that's what leaders like Gandhi or Mother Teresa do, they are people with a very clear point of view. One should never have a fixed perception of anything because having a fixed perception kills anybody who has one.
Morality is not a virtue that many can tolerate without a conscience. It was considered the critical awareness of humanity's standards of conduct that are accepted as proper. Yet, for Scout, morality becomes not only a principle, but also a necessity in order for her to survive in the prejudiced society of Maycomb County. It is solely the essence of ethics that causes her to frown upon the injustices brought about by intolerance. Thus, Scout's maturity towards understanding the vitality of morality allows her to become a noble individual in an unjust social order.
Mindless decisions, versus decisions that require careful contemplation, directly correlate to an individual’s perspective. Albeit, the latter decisions are seen as more significant. These decisions are affected by a multitude of environmental factors. Friends. Family. Experiences. These all shape individual perspective. The book, To Kill a Mockingbird epitomizes significant individual perspective. The author, Harper Lee develops the idea that an individual’s perspective becomes significant through careful contemplation of controversial topics, and illustrates that it is the mindless following of accepted societal beliefs, that prevents this thinking from taking place. Seen in Scout’s developing view of Mr.
Mahatma Gandhi, famous anti-war activist and leader once said: “There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.” Gandhi explains that a man’s conscience overpowers any legal justice system, a universal truth that is explained in both To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Letter to My Son by Ta-Nehisi Coates. In both of these texts, the judgement of one’s conscience is told through two different perspectives; through the eyes of a white man and the eyes of a black man. In To Kill a Mockingbird, this perspective comes from Atticus, a white lawyer living in a prejudiced town at the height of the Great Depression.
Maycomb is on edge; the racial divide is as sharp as a knife. Despite having lived there for their entire lives, young Scout and Jem Finch are naive to the extent the racial dynamics influence their lives. They are like many other members of Maycomb, holding prejuicides about those among them, notably their neighbor Bob Radley and Tom Robinson, a black man accused of rape. Boo is a legend, depicted to be a monster and the young children cannot resist the allure of trespassing his house. In many benevolent acts, Boo makes his presence indirectly felt, later intervening in a dangerous situation to protect Scout and Jem. Their dad, Atticus, embodies the moral of the story and his unique virtue acts as a guide in Scout and Jem’s maturity. He defends
‘Instinctive judgment’ is the motivation of an action in response to external stimuli based on either behaviour, innateness, or impulsion without involving reason (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014). Although intuition is often associated instinct, they are separate concepts because instinct is inherent and intuition is acquired; instinct is the inherent inclination to react to a situation because of an inherited configuration of thought while intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without thought. There are as many meanings to ‘check’ as there are for ‘instinctive judgment’, but in this essay the word means to verify as to correctness but also stops or restrains false judgments from becoming permanent. If the statement is interpreted with these
Conscience, in modern usage, term denoting various factors in moral experience. Thus, the recognition and acceptance of a principle of conduct as binding is called conscience. In theology and ethics, the term refers to the inner sense of right and wrong in moral choices, as well as to the satisfaction that follows action regarded as right and the dissatisfaction and remorse resulting from conduct that is considered wrong. In earlier ethical theories, conscience was regarded as a separate faculty of the mind having moral jurisdiction, either absolute or as a representative of God in the human soul.
With that being said, I believe that a person of integrity may differ about what is right but a moral person cannot have integrity. The utilitarian approach alienates individuals from their own commitments and moral identity. Deliberating and acting for reasons directed at the right or good thing to do depend upon a moral theory in which we have personal integrity. To be moved by the needs of others, we need to possess substantial commitments that help individuals see themselves as part of the group (Sheehy 2008). Not to dismiss what role principles like the principles of utility have in our decisions, but our view of the world is made of the commitments forming us. This idea is not limited to an individual, but central to the nature of us and woven into our moral thinking.
If you were a parent would you want the best for your kids? Would you want to teach them to search out for the true meaning of dignity and respect? This was the goal of one father, Atticus Finch. Being a nearly fifty-year-old man with extremely young children he wanted to share his wisdom and firsthand experiences with his children to shape them into a respectable young man and woman. Throughout his life, Atticus is taught many experiences himself about not judging someone, and to stand up for the helpless and defenseless. Some important morals that he carried through to teach his children in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird is to never judge someone by their social class or race, and to fight for the justice of all the people of Maycomb.
In Harper Lees’s masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird, moral education is a theme that only seems to bloom within the Finch household and is severely lacking in all of Maycomb County. The main character, Scout Finch, is growing in an environment where manners and education matter, this is a quality that can be attributed to the teachings of Atticus Finch and Calpurnia. In a world that is corrupted by prejudice, moral education is form of behavior that stands out, Harper Lee provides examples of this in Calpurnia’s discipline at home, Atticus’s ethical guidance and explanations for the reasoning behind his defense of Tom Robinson, and Scout’s bewilderment at Ms. Gate’s hypocrisy. Moral education is a theme that plays a core role in the development of the title characters as well as the deterioration of the town’s moral standards.