Connections to Doubt: What role does gossip play in To Kill a Mockingbrid? (Week 2)

   
In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, gossip plays a huge role. This boy who lives down the street is a very mysterious character, even though he is talked about a lot in the book. The boy, Boo Radley, was a trouble maker when he was younger, that is why his dad and his brother keep him in the house. His childhood was ruined by his abusive father and now he is not "normal" child. We also know that he was nice and polite as a young child, and that he was not crazy when he was younger. We basically do not know nothing more about him, everything else we think we know about him is the gossip. Other things that we hear about is that he eats cats, hes crazy, and many other things. Many people gossip about the unknown things about him, and this causes problems. Many of the things that people say about him are not true, and makes people think differently of him. 
     In the movie, Doubt, a priest starts talking about gossiping, and how it is bad. He gives an example of gossip being feathers in a pillow. If you cut open the pillow then the feathers will go everywhere, and you will not be able to retract all the feathers from that pillow, its is impossible. That is like the words of gossip. Once someone tells another person of gossip, they have no clue who that person will tell, and how far the will exaggerate on the story. This is a major issue in To Kill a Mockingbird. Many people gossip about Boo Radley and his family but many people do not know much about him.  This ruins how people think of him, could change there relationship with him. This is one of the plots to the story. The children, Scout and Jem, learn that should look at it from that persons perspective before judging them. That is a moral that everyone should learn. But since they do not learn that until later in the book, they do spread rumors. If they ever wanted to take the rumor back they could not. Rumors are like feathers in the wind, you can not collect all of them back. So all that the children said will never be able to be taken back, no matter how much they want to.
     Many people judge people just by what they hear of them, and that is not good. You should get to know them first and then judge them on what you know and not what you think might be true. For all you know the person who told you is making it up, just because the do not like them. When someone tells you something about a person you should ask where they heard it from, and if it is not directly from the person they are talking about then it would not be a good idea to believe them. Even then, it would be a good idea to ask the person if it is true. If you start rumors you should stop, they are very bad and should not be spread. If rumors were spread about you, you would not like it. Why start rumors about other people if you would not like rumors spread about you?