Integrity. The
quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. Having integrity means that you have good
morals and a good character. Why does the
theme of integrity matter in novels? How
does it affect the characters? I’ve
found that having or not having integrity drastically changes the outcome of
both the plot and the characters.
In the book, To Kill a
Mocking bird, Atticus often shows the theme of integrity. He first noticeably shows integrity with the
story of Mrs. Dubose. Even though she is
rude to him and calls him offensive names, he is still polite. He realizes that the old woman is sicker than
she looks and probably doesn’t mean everything that she says. He also knows that it is only her opinion and
not necessarily the correct judgment of what he is doing. Atticus also shows the theme of integrity
when the mob comes to his house. They
question him and mock him, but he knows that what he is doing is right and that
is enough for him. Atticus also shows
integrity just by taking Tom Robinson’s case.
He tells the kids that he took the case because he could “never ask you
to mind me again.” He is basically saying that he took the case because it was
the right thing to do. Atticus had
nothing if not high morals and shows this an innumerable amount of times
throughout the book.
In Four Truths and a lie,
a lot of the main characters don’t have integrity. When Scarlett’s language arts class is
assigned a “stranger writing” activity she is paired with “#17” from another
school. When he sends back a letter
challenging her to play four truths and a lie or have her secret be revealed to
everyone, she accepts. Her first task is
to find out if her teacher, Miss Cardanelli is dating the other school’s
language arts teacher, Mr. Lang. She
already displays the theme of lack of integrity when she invades her teacher’s
privacy and stalks her at the mall.
Then, the second task is to find out if “number 14” is named Louis
Masterpole. Again, she shows lack of
integrity by sneaking in to a classroom during lunch to look in her teacher’s
desk and her grade book to find the list of pen pals. This demonstrated low moral because she is
going through someone else’s private desk just to see find out something for
her own personal benefit. She also shows
the theme of lack of integrity when she gets the third and fourth statements;
Karli Montesorri meets her boyfriend on Monday nights in the library after
curfew and Hannah Wilcox got busted for shoplifting over the summer and the
school almost didn’t let her come back.
She invaded people’s privacy and broke not only in to the library, but
also broke in to the principal’s office and looked in someone else’s
record. She had the least amount of
integrity with the last statement; Amber’s dad isn’t actually in the
military. She completely displays the
theme of lack of integrity when she opens her best friend’s private
journal. Despite that Scarlet has no
integrity with the game, she also lets down her basketball team by meeting her
pen pal in the woods when she is already on probation. She couldn’t play and caused the team to
forfeit because they only had four people that could play. She showed a lack of integrity when she broke
the rules for her own benefit even though she knew that she might disappoint
her team and ruin the game for the rest of them. Scarlett had almost no integrity for the
entire book because she was so scared that her secret would be revealed, that
she didn’t mind exposing others’ and hurting other people to protect herself.
Even though Scarlett had
almost no integrity, her pen pal, James and her roommate, Chrissa, had even
less. James overall had a weak
personality at points in the plot. He
let Chrissa convince him to blackmail a perfect stranger because she said that
it would be “fun.” What kind of person
finds blackmail fun? That alone displays
lack of integrity. He is also letting
Chrissa tell him what to do even though he knows that it is wrong. This is lack of integrity and shows lack of
morals. Despite that James is sending
the statements, Chrissa is really the antagonist in the story. She tries to trick James in to ruining
Scarlett’s social reputation just because she is jealous that Scarlett seems to
take everything too lightly and not get stressed out about everything. Chrissa wanting to hurt someone else because
of envy shows the theme of lack of integrity.
People with integrity don’t purposely to harm other people just because
they don’t like them, or don’t want them to succeed. Almost none of the main characters in this
story have integrity.
The only main student with
integrity in this book is Amber. Amber
is Scarlett’s best friend at her new school.
Amber doesn’t care that Chrissa (who happens to be the most popular
person in their grade) starts rumors about Scarlett. She also doesn’t care too much about what
other people think about her and she doesn’t change her personal beliefs and
opinions to match other people’s. Amber
also shows the theme of integrity when she forgives Scarlett for looking in her
journal. She realizes that Scarlett’s
personality is more important than what she did when she was being
blackmailed. Another example of when
Amber shows integrity is when she doesn’t tell anyone Scarlett’s secret. Even though she knows that it would help her
social status to tell other people Scarlett’s secret, she knew that a real
friendship was more important than her social status. By looking at the bigger picture and looking
over her immediate reactions to the events in the book, Amber showed the theme
of integrity by acting in the best way possible in all situations.
Having or not having
integrity can be a saving quality or a fatal flaw for the characters in these
novels. All the characters with
integrity had better outcomes, because inside they knew that they did the right
things. It is important to have
integrity because then you can be happy with the decisions that you make and
the kind of person that you are. People
like Atticus and Amber have happier endings because they can be more at peace
with themselves, because they did the right thing when others were too afraid to.
Stories like these can be an example to
us and can show that integrity shouldn’t just be a literary theme; it should
also be a quality that we recognize and have in our own lives.
