Karen Lee
Mrs. Wilson
HELA II
5 November, 2014
Reputation…Meaningless?
Reputation helps you become who you are and who you are is either good or bad.
Whether you like it or not, reputation determines what kind of person you are and how are you
portrayed in the moral of the world. Having a good reputation can have a good impact on your
life because of how you are portrayed or seen as in front of other people. Letting everyone see
you as a good person can get you into many different opportunities. A bad reputation could mean
that you are lazy, inconsiderate, and or labeled as a bad person because of past acts. It could
make not like you, not want to be around you, and could make people quickly judge you because
of the things you did that made you gain that bad reputation.
In Othello, Cassio should feel the need to have a good reputation because in this novel,
reputation is all about how the person is and if they are good or not. One slight movement in the
wrong direction could make you have a bad reputation and could really hurt your future life. In
Iago’s place, he believes that reputation is just a worthless label put on another person because
he thinks that it has nothing to do with how or what you are, it’s how you act in the presence that
counts but once it’s in the past, it’s gone. You can’t take it back nor can you dawn on it. Cassio’s
case is that the good will always stick to you and never goes away, just like the bad times. If you
did something bad, it will stick to you forever and you won’t be able to take it back which means
that you will have to think about what horrible things you done and what other people think of
you when they hear your name.
Cassio wants to be Othello’s lieutenant but Othello chooses another. This makes Cassio
furious because of how much he cares about his place in the world. It’s not because Othello
knew that Cassio stabbed him in the back and told Iago that Othello is marrying Desdemona.
Cassio is evil and he wants vengeance. At this point, he doesn’t need to dawn on the good times
because he already gained a bad reputation for not being a lieutenant of Othello, so decides to
seek revenge on Othello and keep his bad reputation going.
In my opinion, reputation doesn’t really affect what you are, (good or evil), it’s who you
are that counts. Not everyone is going to wake up in the morning and decide to gain a bad
reputation. It depends on how you act and how you help others. The good over powers the bad
because good always strives to succeed. If you mess up along the way, it doesn’t mean that you
have a bad reputation; it just means that you made a mistake. Everyone that is human makes
mistakes and we should learn how to avert from that. Learning is a process and reputation won’t
determine who you are in the real world, it just shows that you have a good heart and that you
think and help others or you just simply take the easy way out and not do the hard work in
between. Who said life was easy?
In conclusion, reputation can determine who you are, whether you’re just a kind hearted
person amongst the ill hearted people in the world, or you dwell on the past rather than your
future.