Several of the characters in To Kill A Mockingbird embody the idea that "When a character acts selflessly against the prevailing vices of the the dominant social order, true virtue exhibits itself."
The first of these characters is Tom Robinson. He acts against the dominant social order when he begins doing small odd jobs for Mayella Ewell and refusing to take payment. In the culture of the novel, there's a lot of tension between black and white people, and black are regarded as a lower working class. Because of that, they are NEVER expected to do something for nothing. Tom says, "I was glad to do it, Mr. Ewell didn't seem to help her none, and neither did the chillun, and I knowed she didn't have no nickles to spare." He tries to help her simply out of the goodness of his heart, even though Negros aren't supposed to feel sorry for white girls. Unfortunately for Tom, when things go sour and he ends up in court for a crime he didn't commit, no one listens to his side of the story because he's a Negro.
A second character who embodies the quotation is Boo Radley. Boo's 'vice' is not so much a vice as simply the expectations of his family and the people in his neighbourhood. He's been forbidden by his father to ever step out of the house, but on the night of Scout's Halloween pageant he has to in order to save the children who have become in a strange way his friends. Whether he is the one who kills Bob Ewell that night or not is left to the imagination of the reader. Either way, Boo gets away with acting against that 'vice' because he acts for such a selfless reason. Mr. Heck Tate defines it as,"I never heard tell that it's against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did." He then goes on to say that he won't tell the rest of Maycomb about Boo's virtue because he doesn't want to drag the shy man into the limelight. Unlike Tom Robinson, Boo's circumstances enable him to be very successful in his selfless actions. Scout sums it up perfectly when she says, "Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?"
The third character, the one who embodies the quotation the most, is Atticus Finch. Atticus chooses act against the vice of always thinking of himself. Instead he constantly displays virtue by acting for the good of someone else and taking the consequences upon himself. He tries his best to defend Tom Robinson when he could have just let the case go without doing anything to help. More than that, he puts himself in danger to protect Tom at the jail the night before the trial. He allows Bob Ewell to spit in his face and threaten him because he thinks it's better for him to put up with it than for Ewell to take it out on his children. In the second last scene he tries to take the blame and responsibility for Ewell's death onto himself and Jem, and insists he doesn't want it hushed up because he doesn't want Jem to live with a shadow over him. Mr. Tate won't let him, instead insisting that Ewell fell on his own knife, but the fact that Atticus tried to protect Boo Radley is another sign of his virtue. As Mr. Raymond says, he's "not a run-of-the-mill man."
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