How Does Courage Build Personal Integrity

Having courage is important to humans in everyday life. Courage helps humans through periods of inevitable difficulties during one’s life, requiring one to stand firmly and face challenges head on. In return, this nurtures and builds personal morality. W.H. Auden’s poem, “There Will Be No Peace”, exemplifies this, demonstrating that acts of strength in the face of pain or obstacles encourage the growth of personal integrity.
Being strong and working through times of struggle is crucial to developing personal integrity. This theme is explored in the poem, “There Will Be No Peace” by W. H. Auden. In the poem, Auden writes about an eternal struggle with darkness and negativity throughout life. He continues to state throughout the poem that fighting back with courage and integrity is important to combat with situations like these. “There Will Be No Peace” suggests that moral courage, and the courage to stand up in what one believes in is important to strengthen personal integrity. For example, Auden writes, “…the storm has changed you: / You will not forget, ever, / The darkness blotting out hope, the gale / Prophesying your downfall.” This represents the negative times in life, such as a …show more content…
However, as the poem progresses, Auden includes the idea of fighting back these “beings” with as much as courage as possible. Through his descriptions, he suggests that in order to have courage, it is a necessity to be strong in the face of the obstacles life throws at you, in addition to maintaining moral strength. This will nurture one’s personal integrity because it is not cowering in these moments of struggle that builds a strong character for people, but pushing through