The theme of courage in literary works. Direction "courage and cowardice

Topics of the final essay 2017 - 2018

"Courage and cowardice". This direction is based on a comparison of opposite manifestations of the human "I": readiness for decisive actions and the desire to hide from danger, to evade the resolution of complex, sometimes extreme life situations.
On the pages of many literary works are presented both heroes capable of bold actions and characters demonstrating weakness of spirit and lack of will.

The problem of courage worries every person. For some, courage is a vital necessity; without this character trait, a person will not be able to work where he wants. For some, it's an opportunity to show off. But we all equally need to not get lost in the face of difficulties, which are so many in the modern world. A mother should have remarkable courage, letting her child go to school alone for the first time, thereby accustoming him to independence. There can be no talk of any cowardice when an alarm was sounded in the fire department and the team needed to advance to cope with the elements. Courage, self-discipline are also necessary for our reader, who prepares himself or prepares children for such close examinations.

In the literature, the theme of willpower, spirit, is covered especially widely. In some works, someone's life depends on courage. Basically, the authors endow positive heroes with courage, and negative ones with cowardice, which hints at what is considered bad and what is good. But cowardice is not an indicator of what kind of person he is. The authors, endowing negative characters with such a feature, only emphasize their meanness, meanness of soul, unwillingness to be better. We are all afraid, just not each of us can overcome this fear in ourselves.

Friends! This is an approximate list of topics for the final essay of 2017. Read it carefully and try to find an argument and a thesis for each topic. Here the direction "Courage and cowardice" is revealed from all possible sides. You will probably come across other quotes in your essay, but they will still carry the same meaning. And if you work with this list, you will not have any difficulty in writing the final essay.

1. In battle, those are most exposed to danger who are most obsessed with fear; courage is like a wall. (Sallust)
2. Courage replaces the fortress walls. (Sallust)
3. To be courageous means to regard as distant everything terrible and near everything that inspires courage. (Aristotle)
4. Heroism is an artificial concept, because courage is relative. (F. Bacon)
5. Some show courage without having it, but there is no person who would demonstrate wit if he were not witty by nature. (J. Halifax)
6. True courage rarely comes without stupidity. (F. Bacon)
7. Ignorance makes people bold, and thinking makes them indecisive. (Thucydides)
8. Knowing in advance what you want to do gives you courage and ease. (D. Diderot)
9. Courage is not in vain considered the highest virtue - after all, courage is the key to other positive qualities. (W. Churchill)
10. Courage is resistance to fear, not the absence of it. (M. Twain)
11. Happy is he who boldly takes under his protection what he loves. (Ovid)
12. Creativity takes courage. (A. Matisse)
13. It takes a lot of courage to bring bad news to people. (R. Branson)
14. The success of science is a matter of time and courage of the mind. (Voltaire)
15. It takes a lot of courage to use your own mind. (E. Burke)
16. Fear can make a daredevil timid, but it gives courage to an indecisive one. (O. Balzac)
17. Courage is the beginning of victory. (Plutarch)
18. Courage, bordering on recklessness, contains more madness than resilience. (M. Cervantes)
19. When you are afraid, act boldly, and you will avoid the worst troubles. (G. Sachs)
20. To be utterly devoid of courage, one must be utterly devoid of desire. (Helvetius K.)
21. It is easier to find such people who voluntarily go to death than those who patiently endure pain. (J. Caesar)
22. Who is courageous, he is brave. (Cicero)
23. Courage should not be confused with arrogance and rudeness: there is nothing more dissimilar both in its source and in its result. (J.J. Rousseau)
24. Excessive courage is the same vice as excessive timidity. (B. Johnson)
25. Courage based on prudence is not called recklessness, and the exploits of the reckless should rather be attributed to mere luck than to his courage. (M. Cervantes)
26. The difference between the brave and the coward is that the former, conscious of the danger, does not feel fear, while the latter feels fear, unaware of the danger. (V. O. Klyuchevsky)
27. Cowardice is knowing what to do and not doing it. (Confucius)
28. Fear makes the smart stupid and the strong weak. (F. Cooper)
29. A fearful dog barks more than bites. (Curtius)
30. When fleeing, more soldiers always die than in battle. (S. Lagerlöf)
31. Fear is a bad teacher. (Pliny the Younger)
32. Fear arises as a result of impotence of the spirit. (B. Spinoza)
33. Frightened - half defeated. (A.V. Suvorov)
34. Cowards speak most of all about courage, and scoundrels talk about nobility. (A.N. Tolstoy)
35. Cowardice is inertia that prevents us from asserting our freedom and independence in relations with others. (I. Fichte)
36. Cowards die many times before death, the brave die only once. (W. Shakespeare)
37. To be afraid of love is to be afraid of life, and to be afraid of life is to be two-thirds dead. (Bertrand Russell)
38. Love doesn't mix well with fear. (N. Machiavelli)
39. You can't love someone you're afraid of, or someone who's afraid of you. (Cicero)
40. Courage is like love: it needs to feed on hope. (N. Bonaparte)
41. Perfect love casts out fear, because there is torment in fear; He who fears is not perfect in love. (Apostle John)
    
42. Man fears only that which he does not know; knowledge conquers all fear. (V. G. Belinsky)
43. A coward is more dangerous than any other person, he should be feared more than anything. (L. Berne)
44. There is nothing worse than fear itself. (F. Bacon)
45. Cowardice can never be moral. (M. Gandhi) A coward sends threats only when he is sure of safety. (I. Goethe)
46. You can never live happily when you are trembling with fear all the time. (P. Holbach)
47. Cowardice is very harmful because it keeps the will from useful actions. (R. Descartes)
48. We consider a coward who allows his friend to be insulted in his presence. (D. Diderot)
49. Cowardice in its prime turns into cruelty. (G. Ibsen)
50. Who fearfully cares about how not to lose life will never rejoice in it. (I. Kant)
51. With courage everything can be done, but not everything can be done. (N. Bonaparte)
52. It takes great courage to stand up to enemies, but much more to go against friends. (J. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone")
    

Introduction: In the face of danger, a person is often overcome by a sense of fear. And not every person can suppress it. Fear is so strong that it makes people do completely unpredictable actions. Fear is the enemy of man. And you have to fight your enemies. But do not think that fear is the lot of the weak.

Each of us at least once in our lives experienced this terrible feeling, accompanied by trembling in the knees and a rapid heartbeat. It could be a completely ordinary situation, for example, excitement at the answer at the blackboard, worrying about a loved one, or something more serious.

In any of these cases, fear was by no means an assistant to a person - rather, on the contrary, it prevented him from gathering his thoughts in order to take control of the situation and fix everything. And if fear for us is a completely ordinary feeling that we experience several times a day (just like with joy or sadness), then the manifestation of spiritual weakness in a critical situation, the so-called cowardice, is one of the most terrible human qualities for us.

Cowardice makes a person in our eyes weak, weak, one who is only capable of pitying himself, and not acting for the good of others. But one cannot be called a scoundrel who pities himself out of fear - he is timid and helpless, but not cruel. A scoundrel is one who, out of cowardice, hurts others. Such a coward is afraid, but does not accept his fear, does not put up with defeat, but tries to get rid of it by any means in order to be safe again. Such a coward will step over even a wounded person who needs his help. Such a coward is himself an enemy of society.

Arguments: In Russian literature there are many examples of how cowardice pushed the heroes to actions that harmed all the people around them. So, for example, in the work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter" during the siege of the fortress by Pugachev, one of the heroes, Alexei Shvabrin, betrays his Fatherland, taking the side of the enemy. Shvabrin puts his life and his own well-being above duty. Such a trait as cowardice forces the hero to commit a reprehensible act.

Another example of spiritual weakness in literature is the act of Pontius Pilate, the hero of the novel The Master and Margarita, written by Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov. Despite the fact that the procurator felt pity for Yeshua, he did not dare to confront the Sanhedrin. Pontius Pilate was too cowardly to sacrifice his power for the life of a noble man.

Conclusion: Summing up, we can say once again that cowardly people are the enemies of society. Their cowardice harms not only themselves, but also all those around them. Cowardly people will never be able to commit a noble and courageous act in the name of society, they will always be concerned about only one thing - their own safety. They are not afraid to betray, leave, or - worst of all - take someone's life. They themselves seem to be alien to one of the most important qualities for a person - the ability to sympathize. Therefore, it is so easy for them to deceive, because the feelings of another person, even the closest, mean nothing to them. Cowardice is one of the worst vices.

FIPI comment on the direction "Courage and cowardice":
"This direction is based on a comparison of opposite manifestations of the human "I": readiness for decisive actions and the desire to hide from danger, to evade the resolution of complex, sometimes extreme life situations. On the pages of many literary works, both heroes capable of bold actions and characters showing weakness of spirit and lack of will."

Recommendations for students:
The table contains works that reflect any concept related to the direction "Courage and cowardice". You DO NOT NEED to read all of the titles listed. You may have already read a lot. Your task is to revise your reading knowledge and, if there is a lack of arguments in one direction or another, fill in the gaps. In this case, you will need this information. Take it as a guide in the vast world of literary works. Please note: the table shows only a part of the works in which the problems we need are present. This does not mean at all that you cannot bring completely different arguments in your works. For convenience, each work is accompanied by small explanations (the third column of the table), which will help you navigate exactly how, through which characters, you will need to rely on literary material (the second mandatory criterion when evaluating a final essay)

An approximate list of literary works and carriers of problems in the direction of "Courage and cowardice"

The topic "Courage and cowardice" was proposed among other topics of the final essay on literature for 2020 graduates. Many great people have talked about these two phenomena. “Courage is the beginning of victory,” Plutarch once said. “The courage of the city takes,” A.V. Suvorov agreed with him many centuries later. And some even made provocative statements on this topic: “Real courage rarely does without stupidity” (F. Bacon). Be sure to include such quotes in your work - this will have a positive effect on your assessment, as well as mentioning examples from history, literature or from life.

What to write about in an essay on this topic? You can consider courage and cowardice as abstract concepts in their broadest sense, think about them as two sides of the coin of one person, about the truth and falsity of these feelings. Write about the fact that courage can be a manifestation of excessive self-confidence, that there is a direct connection between selfishness and cowardice, but rational fear and cowardice are not the same thing.

A popular topic for reflection is cowardice and courage in extreme conditions, for example, in war, when the most important and previously hidden human fears are exposed, when a person shows character traits previously unknown to others and to himself. Or vice versa: even the most positive people in an emergency situation can show cowardice. Here it would be useful to speculate about heroism, heroism, desertion and betrayal.

As part of this essay, you can write about courage and cowardice in love, as well as in your mind. Here it would be appropriate to recall willpower, the ability to say “no”, the ability or inability to defend one’s opinion. You can talk about human behavior when making decisions or getting to know something new, getting out of your comfort zone, the courage to admit your mistakes.

Other directions of the final essay.

"Independence of writing the final essay (statement)"
The final essay is done independently. It is not allowed to copy the composition (fragments of the composition) from any source or reproduction from memory of someone else's text (the work of another participant, a text published in paper and (or) electronic form, etc.).

How often do we think about the true meaning of words? It would seem that it could be easier than to explain the concepts of "courage" and "cowardice"? Anyone who is able to risk his life is, of course, a daredevil, not a small one from a timid dozen. And if a person retreats in case of danger, he is most likely timid and cowardly ...

But is it really that simple? Courage or stupidity governs those who ride on the roofs of speeding trains in search of strong emotions? Should indecision or prudence be seen in the actions of a doctor who sends a patient for examination before surgery? It seems to me that courage and cowardice are qualities that can only be defined in the light of the ultimate goal of an act.

Literature has given us many heroes whose courage or cowardice is interesting to speculate about. Consider the characters of the wonderful novel by A.S. Pushkin. It is hard to argue with the fact that Shvabrin, who saves his miserable life by betrayal, is a coward. The courage of Pyotr Grinev, who is ready to give his life for what is dear to him, is also understandable.

And Masha Mironova? Is she a "coward" as her mother calls her? Or is she a prudent girl, as her lover thinks? To answer this question, you need to read the work to the end. We remember that the timidity of the captain's daughter disappears when Peter faces the death penalty: Masha boldly goes for mercy to the empress herself.

You can also refer to the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "". Let us recall the cold-blooded and cruel Dolokhov, who is able to challenge a person to a duel for no reason. Fedor risks his life, but the purpose of this risk is self-affirmation, not self-sacrifice. In my opinion, this is not courage, but a reckless prank of an egoist who does not have to kill a person.

And what can be said about Kutuzov's decision to retreat the Russian army? Can you call it cowardice? No, the great commander showed wisdom and prudence by giving the devastated Moscow to the French. While Napoleon's soldiers turned into marauders, the Russian troops managed to replenish supplies and get stronger, which decided the outcome of the war.

Read other examples of the final essay on literature in grade 11

The material was prepared by Natalya Alexandrovna Zubova, the creator of the online school "SAMARUS".

Pontius Pilate is a cowardly man. And it was for cowardice that he was punished. The procurator could have saved Yeshua Ha-Notsri from execution, but he signed the death warrant. Pontius Pilate feared for the inviolability of his power. He did not go against the Sanhedrin, ensuring his peace at the cost of the life of another person. And all this despite the fact that Yeshua was sympathetic to the procurator. Cowardice prevented saving a man. Cowardice is one of the most serious sins (based on the novel The Master and Margarita).

A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin"

Vladimir Lensky challenged Eugene Onegin to a duel. He could cancel the fight, but he chickened out. Cowardice manifested itself in the fact that the hero reckoned with the opinion of society. Eugene Onegin thought only about what people would say about him. The result was sad: Vladimir Lensky died. If his friend had not been afraid, but preferred moral principles to public opinion, tragic consequences could have been avoided.

A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter"

The siege of the Belogorsk fortress by the troops of the impostor Pugachev showed who was considered a hero, who was a coward. Aleksey Ivanovich Shvabrin, saving his life, betrayed his homeland at the first opportunity and went over to the side of the enemy. In this case, cowardice is a synonym