Examples Of Reputation In To Kill A Mockingbird

Having a reputation is unavoidable. People will always make subconscious judgments of you which will affect their opinion even if there is no base behind it. However, letting it conform your personal identity and conscience is something that any individual can do. Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a perfect example of this idea. Boo was assigned his father’s reputation by society; cruel and cold. However, even in the solidarity of his home, he chose to define himself as he pleased and refused to let the reputation handcuff him into being someone that he’s not. A similar situation has happened to myself, with the reputation of being a nerd likewise being chained to me. However, I could consciously refuse to allow that to define who I believe I am. This leads me to believe that even though any individual may have a distinct reputation forced upon them, they always have the

The act of having a reputation is one that everyone goes through at some point in their life, but everyone has the ability to refuse to conform themselves to their reputations, assigned to them by those who surround them. Atticus explains this idea of non-conformity perfectly to Scout at the end of the novel, using Boo Radley as an example. “He was real nice… Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them” (376, 18). This directly proves how reputation and individual identity and decision making are linked, but not cemented together. Boo Radley had the reputation of being just like his father - an evil, unforgiving man. However, later in the novel readers find out that he’s quite the opposite! He’s taken it onto himself to refuse to allow himself to become a shadow of his father like