Who Is Boo Radley's Reputation In To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is about Jean Louise Finch, also known as Scout, and the town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930’s. For the duration of the novel Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill torment their antisocial neighbor Arthur “Boo” Radley, trying to get him to come out of his house. The story takes a turn when Atticus, Scout and Jem’s father, is asked to defend Tom Robinson,a black man who is accused of raping Mayella Ewell. When this happens Scout, Jem and the whole town get to see how unfair life can be. Throughout the town people are judged based on their appearance and that is how their reputation is formed, but most of the time someone's appearance doesn’t show who they really are.The theme of appearance

The citizens of Maycomb think of Boo as a sort of myth, and most of the town avoids the Radley house as best they can. In chapter one Lee writes ''Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained--if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time.” (lee 16). This description of Boo Radley comes solely from the rumors that people have made based on his appearance, while in reality Boo goes out of his way to leave gifts for Jem and Scout, and to save them from Bob Ewell. From the way, that Boo acts towards everyone after he saves the kids, it is apparent that he is socially incompetent, but he’s still just a regular person. Later, while Scout is heading back from walking Boo home, she takes a moment and she stands on the Radley porch. She brings up something that Atticus had said to her in the past about how you don’t know a person until you stand in their shoes, and in that moment she is finally able to look past the rumors that the town has made based on his appearance and understand who he really is. Although

Scout and Jem have both disliked Mrs.Dubose for a while, they pass her house on their way to school, and whenever they see her she dishes out harsh glares, and rude remarks about both their behavior and their future. One day when they are walking past Mrs.Dubose’s house, she start to make comments on how atticus is defending Tom Robinson in the trial, and Jem doesn’t take her comments as well he should have and he ends up destroying her garden in rage. As a punishment Jem is told he has to not only clean her garden, but he has to read to her after school. A month goes by of the kids reading to her,and one day Atticus pulls them aside to say that Mrs.Dubose has died. Atticus explained to Jem that Mrs.Dubose’s was a morphine addict and then he proceeded to explain why he made him read to her by saying "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew." (lee 149) While Jem was thinking that Mrs.Dubose was just a mean old women, she was actually trying to kick her morphine addiction which, to