Name: Oliver Humanities
7th Grade The Crucible
The Importance Of Reputation (Or rather, unimportance)
By
Oliver Eig
People have experiences whenever they do something. Those experiences can shape how people think about them. For example, If a regular person heard about someone going through a near death experience, they would think of them as a traumatized person. Or if someone served in the army, they would be thought of as brave. This status is called reputation. There are good reputations and bad reputations that are gained by people doing bad or good things. If someone has a bad reputation and want to change that, they may redeem themselves by doing something that someone may do to gain a good reputation, like doing community service. This has been happening a lot around the world and will keep happening if nothing changes. Throughout all of the world’s history, people have abused their reputation in different ways in order to get what they want in life.
The theme reputation is shown prominently throughout The Crucible by Arthur Miller by numerous characters. These characters are people like Judge Danforth, Hathorne, and Reverend Parris, except the person that has the deepest connection to reputation is none other than John Proctor. “I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public? God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name; God knows how black my sins are! It is enough!” (Miller, p. 130). This quote, stated by John Proctor, is a perfect example of someone being worried about how people see himself and think about himself. Judge Danforth and Judge Hathorne believe he has committed an act of witchcraft, which he hadn’t, although he had committed adultery, which he could hang for. The Judges got him in trouble with the law because he was accused of witchcraft. Proctor may have been interpreting his case of witchcraft as his case of adultery in his head. This, obviously, is embarrassing for him and his good name and he did not want the entire town to know. On the other hand, he also did not want people to see his name on the church and see him as a witch. He wanted his grandchildren to come to church without seeing his name branded as a witch, regardless of whether he was alive or dead. He cared about what other people think about him than what he thinks about himself. That is why he always asked Elizabeth for her opinion on himself, and she always responded with, “I cannot judge you, John.” This is the reason why he hanged himself to save his good name in the village. What John Proctor wanted in life was his reputation, even if it took sacrificing what he wanted in life, which was to live together with his family. This is the exact opposite of sacrificing your reputation in order to get what you want in life. More than 300 years later, a man has tried to build up his reputation, and eventually his hunger for a good reputation was his downfall. This man’s name is Joseph McCarthy.
Throughout Joseph McCarthy’s life, he has tried to make himself popular and look good. When he was running for senator one of his main “marketing” points was that he served in the army. His campaign portrayed this by displaying a photograph of him in a fighter jet, even though he did not fight in the army, he worked in the office. “The 41 year old McCarthy had done little to make himself known since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1946. But this changed with the speech he gave on that cold evening,” (Fitzgerald, p. 9). After McCarthy was elected as senator of Wisconsin he calmed down a bit, since he got what he wanted, which was to establish a reputation. But eventually his satisfaction became diminished, and he grew a greedy hunger for an even greater reputation and fame. The way he chose to cope with this was to scapegoat other people as communists, which was considered un american at the time and still is today. He gave a speech saying that he had a list of 234 people in the government that were communists. This was the beginning of McCarthyism. In the wake of McCarthy’s speech, the group HUAC was born. They accused a lot of people, especially major celebrities of communism. This created a social uproar in the McCarthy Era. Many people, not only celebrities, lost their jobs and their reputation for having communist views. There are plenty of good examples of people like this in the modern era, McCarthy’s waiting to happen. Except there is someone else that instead of building his reputation up, then crashing it down, is just simply diminishing his reputation to a crisp. This person is none other than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is a man that gets what he wants in life by tearing down his and others reputation, whether it be intentional or unintentional. He has and will keep doing this throughout his life. This character trait is one of the many reasons to be afraid under his presidency. For example, political relations. He could destroy some of our allied countries which would be bad if heaven forbid we go to war anytime soon. Or if we are doing business with them. Also, his consistent pushing of a Muslim ban may offset powerful muslim political leaders, regardless of whether they are one of the countries being banned or not. But, there are also internal issues with his presidency, which actually may be the most prominent. Since he wanted to become president, he found it to be fit to say awful things that may appeal to large amounts of uneducated people therefore helping him win the presidency. Uneducated in this context means unaware of the reality of the things he is saying. But these statements will not quiver once he becomes president, he will keep on making controversial statements until he gets what he wants. The question is what does he want? Here is a great example of the aftermath of him tearing apart his reputation for power. “In more than two dozen interviews, they described creative methods of punishing his economic empire and expunging the once-esteemed reminders of him from their lives, closets, golf bags and bookshelves over the past few months. They have thrown out — or cut up — Trump neckties, called off stays at Trump hotels, even stopped imbibing Trump wines,” (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/us/politics/donald-trump-brand-reaction.html?_r=0). This was taken from an article written about Donald Trump and his relationship with the general public through his company. Since the country is more or less split into two about their opinion on Trump and his policies, some people have expressed their disagreement by destroying things related to trump and his businesses. This is different than Joseph McCarthy and John Proctor because instead of using their reputation to get what they want in life, Donald Trump has done the opposite. In order to become president, he had to throw away his decency as a human being to people who would have thought as him as a regular rich, businessman otherwise, and turn into a politician that acts very unprofessional, that discriminates people and is supported by the KKK. So in order to get what he wants in life, which is to have the attention of the world, he has to throw away, or dispel his reputation, which was not nearly as negative since he began his campaign. All in all, it is safe to say that reputation has affected Donald J. Trump in a rather fortunate manner. This meaning he gets to use his reputation to get what he wants.
Throughout all of the world’s history, people have abused their reputation in different ways in order to get what they want in life. People have used their reputation throughout history in different ways to get what they want. This makes it harder for people to get what they want without a reputation. But it is still possible. For this to happen is all chance and luck when you are born. If your parents are wealthy, influential, or poor, and non influential. In America, there is more of the latter. Most people have to work for what they want, not just have it handed to them on a silver platter because of who their parents were or how much money they had. Although, you could be able to gain a reputation by doing reputable things during your life and then use that to get privileges, most of the people including those that were not born with a reputation abuse their’s and gain power or objects of power. As mentioned before, John Proctor, Joseph McCarthy, and Donald Trump are three people with different relationships with reputation and what they want. John Proctor, for example, had a reputation as a good farmer and townsperson. He cared deeply about how people thought about him. So when he was accused of witchcraft (and confessed to adultery), he wanted to keep his reputation in the village, so he did not have his name stapled to the church as a witch, and he did not sign the paper, therefore not confessing. Since he did not confess, he was then hanged. He cared about his reputation more than life itself. That was what he wanted, and what he got in the end. Joseph McCarthy, on the other hand, wanted to be popular and well known around the world. So he attracted attention to himself, and started making outrageous accusations calling specific people that he disliked in the government, communists. This gave him a reputation as a politician, but eventually people saw through him and came to realize that these accusations were false, which made him extremely unpopular and he lost what he wanted in life, which was to be well-known and well, frankly, a hero. So in the process of his growing hunger for a larger social status, he grew it in the wrong way, sending his dreams of being popular crashing down. Finally, there is Donald Trump, a man who has more than one relationship with reputation. The first of which was explained before, which was that he is unconsciously is tearing his reputation down because of all of the outrageous remarks he is making and how he is unpresidential. This is important, except he also has another, which very similar to McCarthy’s. This is how he takes other people’s reputation down to build his up. The difference between him doing this and McCarthy doing this is that McCarthy was accusing people of doing things, not personally attacking them. McCarthy was also trying to build his reputation as a person up, which Donald may be trying to do out of ferocious greed, but he already has a perfectly fine reputation as a businessman. The people McCarthy accused did not matter to him in the grand scheme of things. Trump just wants to be a bully and protect himself and his “reputation”. He has said put-downs to news networks, reporters, politicians, and even judges. So, even if you are not putting down people’s reputation intentionally, like John Proctor, we should still try our hardest to build other people up, not take them down. Even if you have good reason to take them down, don’t. It is the right thing to do. But, throughout all of history, not just American, and not just these specific people, people have been worrying so much about how they come across to people, from teenagers, to dictators. While what they should really be worrying about is how they live up to their reputation, and how they can make the world a better place. Nobodies first concern should be themselves. If they are a good human being, then they should be selfless, not a bully, not an attention scrounger, and not self absorbed like these three men. In conclusion, past reputations mean nothing. The only thing that is important and meaningful is what you do next.
Reflection:
Before we wrote this essay we were required to write a complete five paragraph essay comparing three different time periods to a theme. My theme was reputation. The three time periods that we were assigned to connect our themes to were: the McCarthy Era, the Salem Witch Trials, and Modern Day. Surprisingly, they all had a lot in common with my theme. But, in specific with my essay, I wrote a lot about people during those time periods. These three people were Joseph McCarthy, John Proctor, and Donald Trump. During the process of writing this essay, I gained an understanding of the theme reputation that I hadn’t thought possible otherwise. It was really eye opening. I am very proud of my work. I just got my grades back from my essay. They were very mixed. I got a 4 in my demonstration of an understanding of literature through written responses. I got a 2.5 in using proper writing conventions. I think that I got this 2.5 because I did not edit it carefully enough before and after it was peer edited. In the future I will make it my goal to edit more carefully.