The True Courage

In L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion hopes that the great and terrible Oz will grant him his wish for courage. The day before he is to grant the Lion’s wish, the Wizard tells him: “You have plenty of courage, I am sure,…All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.”

What the Wizard calls “the True courage” has been much on my mind lately, for my country is involved in a grim, terrible, and tragic war. Every day, there are articles in the news about the deaths of soldiers and civilians and their acts of courage. There are different types of courage. For instance, there is physical, moral, emotional, and spiritual courage. There’s even a type of courage we can call “creative,” which is needed to submit a poem to a publisher, for example, to display one’s artwork or perform on stage. I want to briefly review ideas from some texts on this subject I have read over the years, ones I’ve found particularly meaningful.

The first is Laches, one of Plato’s early dialogues. Even though an early work, it contains much in its approach to philosophical inquiry that Plato would continue to develop in later dialogues. For instance, Plato rarely asks the average person on the street serious questions. Rather, he seeks out an expert on the topic he is interested in. When studying courage, who better to ask than a soldier or, even better, a general? Laches, the dialogue’s eponymous character, draws inspiration from a historical Athenian general and aristocrat of the same name, who played a significant role in the early stages of the Peloponnesian War.

Another of Plato’s trademarks is also present, his modus operandi:

• Have the expert define the term of interest.
• Pick apart the definition offered.
• Satisfied? If not, ask for another attempt to define the term.

This process is Plato’s loop of inquiry, repeated numerous times and, in the end, more often than one would like, abandoned without determining a satisfactory answer. Unfortunately, this lack of a solution is exactly what happens in Laches.

When Socrates asks Laches what courage is, Laches replies that courage is displayed by someone who remains at their post. However, Socrates is looking for a more general answer, not just a definition tied to a specific type of military courage. Laches then suggests that courage is also linked to endurance and, then, to intelligence, but Socrates keeps pushing for a broader definition. The discussion goes on for a while until they eventually abandon their attempt to define courage.

What intrigues me about this dialogue is that a Greek warrior, indeed a general who has been in combat, cannot define the virtue most often attributed to combat soldiers. Look again at what the Wizard, a known humbug, tells the Lion, “facing danger when you are afraid.” Not such a humbug, this Wizard!

Let’s look at Stephen Crane’s novel, The Red Badge of Courage, which was first published in 1895. The book is set during the American Civil War and focuses on the character of a young Union soldier named Henry Fleming. As he confronts the realities of war, he struggles with his fear, his white-knuckle fear, which can be overwhelming and paralyzing at times, as well as his haunting self-doubt. Henry has a strong desire to prove his bravery in battle. The book contains several passages that reveal the weird thoughts that people can have when involved in dangerous situations: At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

“People with torn bodies.” Happy? How far the mind has drifted!

I served in the US Army from 1972-1975. The Vietnam War was still going on when I entered, but I was sent to Oklahoma to learn about missiles and then was stationed in southern Germany. I never saw combat. I think it’s fair to say that my four barracks’ companions were the most dangerous situation I faced. When I showed up at my room for the first time, one of them took me aside and opened a Bible with a square hole cut in its center, large enough to hold his drug stash. He looked at me and said, “If anyone in this room gets busted, it’s your ass.” Well, that was pretty clear. What I felt was not exactly white-knuckle fear, but nerve-wracking nevertheless.

Earlier, I mentioned several kinds of courage. The last book I want to discuss is a WWII classic, Thomas Heggen’s Mister Roberts. The book was published in 1946 and is based on Heggen’s experiences as a sailor serving aboard an attack cargo ship in the South Pacific during WWII. The ship in Mister Roberts is not a combat ship; it’s a cargo ship. Its job was to ferry supplies, toilet paper, dungarees, etc. It was the kind of work essential for the war effort, but at the same time, the type of work that made some men nervous about how to handle the question their children would inevitably ask: Dad, what did you do during the war?

The book was a tremendous success. It was made into a play, a well-known movie starring Henry Fonda as Mister Roberts, a television series, and a TV movie. However, Heggen’s life was not happy; it was far from it. He struggled with his success and writer’s block and died on May 19, 1949, aged 30. You can read about him here. I bring this book up because of something Heggen says in it early on concerning courage. The ship’s name is the Reluctant.

Admittedly it is not an heroic ship. Whether though, you can also denounce its men as unheroic is another matter….heroism—physical heroism—is very much a matter of opportunity. On the physical level heroism is not so much an act, implying volition, as it is a reflex. Apply the rubber hammer to the patella tendon and commonly, you produce the knee jerk. Apply the situation permitting bravery to one hundred young males with actively functioning adrenal glands and, reasonably, you would produce seventy-five instances of clearcut heroism….Like the knee jerk, physical courage is perhaps latent and even implicit in the individual, needing only the application of situation, of opportunity, to reveal it.

Heggen, Thomas. Mister Roberts. Foreword by Thomas J. Cutler. Annapolis, Maryland: United States Naval Institute, 1992. Reprinted by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing. pp. 7-8.

May we all soon live in a world where the only kind of courage required is creative courage; and may each of us have as much of it as we need.

All the best,
Gershon