This study will examine the characters in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird in order to define the nature of courage. Atticus Finch, a clearly heroic figure in the novel, who lives according to high principle, offers a definition of courage as when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what (112). This definition seems to have more to do with stubbornness or determination rather than courage. Atticus’ definition would seem to hold that a career criminal is courageous, for such a criminal knows that he will be caught and punished sooner or later. Was Hitler courageous when he set out to conquer the world and establish a one-thousand-year German reign, when he must have known on some level that it was impossible, yet he began? Simple stubbornness, determination, sticktoitiveness, or plain…