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To Kill A Mockingbird Identity Essay

Decent Essays

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.”(Chuck Palahniuk) Everyone that you will meet will help you on your journey to create your own identity. They show action, expression, and judgement that you then process in conjunction to yourself. Our identities are profoundly influenced by our communities that shape the way we act in everyday life and our perspective on our own life. This is seen in To Kill A Mockingbird, “Shunned”, and my own personal experiences. In To kill A Mockingbird we can see that Scout acts much different than expected in her community. In this quote, “I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, …show more content…

Here in this instance we see that Meredith tries to reconcile what happened to her, “The scarring is left for the girl, an intense, debilitating wound that weeps for the rest of her life. It’s quite a price to pay for having sex, scared sex, on a beach on a foggy Labor Day night,” (Hall, 67). She views and goes over what her community did to her based on what had happened seeing it as such a harsh punishment. She goes on to continue with this “The shunning has created a deep shame that infuses my life. It makes me feel wildly vulnerable. I struggle still to claim a permanent space, an immutable relationship to those around me. It negates forever the ability to have a real friend,” (Hall, 67). Her community has so harshly affected her she can no longer “have real friends.” Because of this, Meredith most likely now suffers from a psychological trauma left from the cruel actions taken from the society she once lived in. This trauma leaves her forever scarred with a distorted view on her ability to act with friends and to socialize. The actions taken by Meredith’s Community had unfavorably impacted her thoughts on her

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