Courage in Peace like a River Like Mark Twain once said, “courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” I feel like this quote exemplifies courage because courage is overcoming a fear and standing up to it. To me, it’s putting yourself in any kind of danger or risk to do what is right. Leif Enger explores this idea in Peace Like a River by showing how Davy, Reuben, and Jeremiah are courageous. Reuben’s dad, Jeremiah Land, is a good man. He always seems to do the right thing no matter how scary I could be. He’s not only my favorite character, but in my opinion, the bravest and best human in the book. At the very beginning, Jeremiah, being the janitor, was in the boy’s locker room of Roofing High School when he heard laughs …show more content…
Jeremiah came in and hit those boys senseless. But they of course still didn’t learn their lesson. Israel told Jeremiah, “Tommy and me are watching your entire family. All of ‘em. You understand” (Enger 25)? It took a great deal of courage for him to stand up to Tommy and Israel because we would later find out what they’re capable of. Even the cops are afraid of those two! Like Israel promised, they watched Jeremiah’s whole family. They covered the Land’s door in tar, kidnapped Swede, and came in their house without permission. Davy had enough courage and shot Tommy and Israel. They both died. So Davy was falsely taken to prison. A few days later, of course, he broke out. Jeremiah, Swede, and Reuben were all really worried because they had no clue where Davy went. They decided to leave Roofing and take a trek in North Dakota to find Davy. There was also a federal officer named Andreeson following Davy who was just so annoying. He asked Jeremiah to talk and Jeremiah was not having it with him. The fed was lying but still pretending that he and Davy’s family “don’t have to be enemies”. Jeremiah did definitely not agree with that and told him “it appears we do”. This was brave