The Mystery of Courage

"Miller says on the very first page of the book that it was meant to be about cowardice, but that cowardice ‘gave way’ – that being what it always does — and courage is what it gives way to. It’s a rare case of the virtue being sexier than the vice. You frequently see cowardice figuring as a sort of foundation to a story of courage. At the beginning of Lord Jim , Jim is a sailor who jumps ship in a cowardly way. The rest of the novel is about him trying to redeem himself. In many stories an act of cowardice — or a supposed act of cowardice — is what starts off a story about courage. The Four Feathers is another example. It’s a book (and many films, the 1939 version is the classic) about a British military officer in the 1880s who decides to give up his position so that he can marry his true love. Around the same time war comes in the Sudan and his three army pals are outraged that he does not decide to change his plan and join them and go to battle. So they send him white feathers to shame him about his cowardice. He deals with that ok but the fourth feather comes from his fiancée, and that’s the feather that breaks his determination to not go to war. This happens at the beginning of the book and the rest of the tale is of his going in disguise to the Sudan and saving the lives of each of his comrades who had sent him the feathers. So courage takes over. And needless to say, in the end, he gets his fiancée back."