For example, the theme of the two stories is sorrow. Not only is it stated in the title of both stories, but it is implied throughout the text. The sorrow lies in the feelings of Faye from A Secret Sorrow and the woman in “The Sorrowful Woman”. However, Faye feels she is a woman who cannot do enough, whereas the woman feels she does too much.
It is especially apparent with Joseph. He feels that he needs to be punished for all the things he has done in the past. When Sage asks why he is so desperate to die, he replies, “Because I should be dead, Sage. It’s what I deserve” (47). Many attempts were made before asking Sage for help.
He “stood on the verge of lunacy” (135), tortured by both himself and by Chillingworth. Even when he finally reveals his sin, he dies right after, admitting his cowardice in that he would rather die than experience public shame. He may have lived an easier life had he revealed his secret, but he was too focused on upholding his current moral righteousness that he could not bring himself to divulge his wrongdoings. His own shame was so strong that it led to
Victor is stirred by his work, but not in a positive manner. He goes on to explain his feelings towards the creature by saying, “… my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred” (136). Victor is so bewildered and repulsed by the creature that he misses key signs of violence, from the creature, that may have saved Victor’s family had he not been so
Sociologically, true alienation and loneliness leads to depression and suicide. Psychologically, guilt and regret drive the force of internal conflict and corruption. Half of those who know the truth about Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne have made the Reverend promise to never reveal the truth, while the other half intends to torture Dimmesdale endlessly, sending him into a downward spiral until what remains has no trace to the young and beloved Reverend Dimmesdale. For example, Dimmesdale exclaims, "I should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgement-seat." The Reverend wishes only to feel the relief and freedom that washes over Hester by shedding the facade of holiness that holds Dimmesdale in such Hugh regard.
It's a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut out that staring”(O’Brien 120). Just though the imagery that we receive from O’Brien we can see that Tim was very ashamed of his actions and the silence that overtook him. Tim feels really guilty and ashamed for killing that man and we see that through O’Brien’s
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the carelessness of the characters, immorality, and many mistakes the characters made brought about chaos in the novel. The Great Gatsby contains a large amount of immorality in it, so much so that much chaos arises and some people even die, as was the case with Jay Gatsby and Myrtle Wilson. Many characters in the novel are extremely immoral and make an immense amount of careless mistakes. The decision-making skills in the characters’ minds are awful, they do not know that some things are bad for them, for example back in the 1920’s alcohol was illegal, but all the characters in the novel still drank even though it was outlawed, and also having affairs outside of your marriage as well, represented by Tom and Myrtle. Overall, The Great Gatsby is indeed an incredibly immoral novel.
“ Mistakes made by a foolish mind, cruel mistakes that bring on death.” (1406 to 1407.) In this quote, King Creon of Thebes is acknowledging that he has made tragic mistakes, because he wanted to the laws of his state, that he put in place, instead of preserving the safety of his family, which consequently lead to suffering for many. In the play Antigone, by Sophocles, the character Creon makes decisions based on what he feels is right, and refuses to pay attention to other’s advice. His stubbornness and selfishness prove fatal, and as a consequence of his moral deficiency, he kills an innocent woman, and loses his son in the aftermath.
Can the way you behave change the way people perceive you? In “The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the character Roger Chillingworth is perceived by other Characters in the story as evil. Roger Chillingworth is the husband of Hester Prynne, which he is ashamed of because of her adultery. He becomes a doctor, and has devoted all his time to try to treat Dimmesdale of his illness, and he becomes suspicious of Dimmesdale, trying to figure out why he is so ill, and he ends up guessing that it was a spiritual problem, and grows to the conclusion that he was Hester’s lover. Chillingworth has altered from a courteous scholar to an vengefulness, obsessed devil, and is perceived by numerous characters throughout the story, as an evil, demonic
His despair was inflicted upon him once he committed adultery with Hester Prynne and decided to keep it secret. “While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul…”(Hawthorne 117). The pain came from deep within Dimmesdale, and he believed that one sin can destroy his whole life. Puritanism is now looked upon as one of the hardest religions because of their strictness in their ways of life. They truly believed that if they sinned they would be looked at as if they were scum in the eyes of the church, and this was exactly how Dimmesdale saw himself.
In life, unhealthy unburdening will lead to an inevitable demise. The only unknown is whether the person or a toxic environment around oneself is the cause. In the Scarlet Letter Hawthorne writes Dimmesdale as a beloved minister who is sinfully in love with Hester Prynne a wife, a mother, and an outsider in the eyes of the townspeople. Dimmesdale and Hester have a daughter Pearl, who’s born out of sin due to Hester’s pre-existing marriage to a man named Chillingworth, a “doctor” who is often referred to as a leech due to his fiend ways. The story takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, a town that contains generations of people who have been groomed to repress and never express.
When encountered with a woman charged with adultery, Jesus proclaimed, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). As no man is truly without sin, humans cannot justly punish them for sins without holy guidance. They can, however, worsen their own sin to the point of being irredeemable. in The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Dimmesdale’s sin was the most unholy and dangerous of all those presented in the novel.
Arthur Dimmesdale is a very important character in The Scarlet Letter. He is the highly respected reverend of what is now present-day Boston; they called their little town the Massachusetts bay colony. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale embodies a secret that the audience quickly finds out in the beginning of the novel. He has committed adultery with Hester Prynne. Dimmesdale is guilt-ridden because of the sin he committed with Hester.
Arthur Dimmesdale’s main internal conflict was the guilt derived from his sins. Arthur was a well known and admired minister of the Puritans. However, after committing the sin of adultery with Hester Prynne, he is guilt ridden and cannot confess his sins openly. Due to Dimmesdale’s weak nature, he is incapable of dealing with sin. As Dimmesdale’s guilt continously gets worse by the pressure of Roger, he inflicts self punishment on himself, “secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge...
Imagine living in a place where one small sin could define who you are for the rest of your life. That is what happened in The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. The novel is set in a seventeenth-century Puritan community in Boston, Massachusetts. A young woman by the name of Hester Prynne commits a small act of adultery and is shamed for the rest of her life, by wearing a scarlet letter “A” on her breast. The book is centered around the theme of justice and judgement.