To Kill A Mockingbird explores a number of themes, such as education, courage and especially growing up. In fact, it is considered a coming-of-age novel as it shows the growth in Jem and Scout as the book progresses, while they face difficulties and experiences that lead them to become more responsible. In the novel, Jem especially exemplifies the idea of courage, and as he matures, how his own perception of courage changes. At the beginning of the book, Jem mostly sees courage as physical courage, and “In all his life, [had] never declined a dare”. Hence, because of this idea of courage which in, he accepts Dill’s dare to go touch the Radley house, even though he was scared by the idea of it and Boo Radley. In a separate incident, when Jem wanted to pass a note to Boo Radley, he got his pants caught on the Radley place’s fence. Because he did not want to disappoint Atticus by letting him find out that he was teasing Boo Radley, he went back to get his pants although he knew that it was dangerous. He knew that he might get shot by Nathan Radley and be injured or worse, but his courage and determination not to disappoint Atticus triumphed over his fear of injury. However, this type of courage is only physical courage and in fact is not moral courage. Although he was able to overcome his fears, what he did was dishonest and wrong. Ideally, he should have owned up and faced the music, which would be morally courageous. Since he did not seem to be guilty about the wrong that he did, he probably did not consider the morals of what he did very much. However, as the book progresses, his perception of courage seems to change to one more of moral courage. He demonstrates this in several incidents, first of all when Dill ran away from home. Although Scout is shocked that her brother would “break the remaining code of [their] childhood”, Jem goes ahead to tell on Dill as he knows that it is not morally right to make Dill’s mother w