Silence And Secrecy In The Scarlet Letter

Duality. The Unseen Side of Everything. Many people can agree with the fact that society can be a controlling, manipulative beast. It’s hand persistently reaches out and drags unsuspecting victims into depths known as conformity. Over time, many people develop masks of their own to hide from this beast and to be seen as a typical and average person.

The Prison Door In this Chapter from The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne introduces the setting of the book in Boston. He uses a gloomy and depressed tone in the beginning of the chapter. He is able to convey this tone using imagery while describing the citizens, the prison, and the cemetery. However, as he continues to discuss the rose-bush, he uses parallelism to shift the tone to be brighter and joyful. To create a gloomy and depressed tone, Hawthorne uses imagery.

Throughout human history social norms have been an immense controversy starter against others. However now that time has passed there has been a shift of what is socially normal from times prior to today. The social norms impressed upon Hester conflict with those of today because of the decrease of morals and the society of today has become more accepting of taboo actions. Overtime the amount of morals society has held in the past has decreased.

A Life Undone By A Letter Hester’s character and personality are heavily scrutinized in D.H. Lawrence’s “ On The Scarlet Letter.” Lawrence’s unarguable acceptance of Puritan norms causes him to disagree with Hester’s characterization. In addition to his condescending remarks of Hester, he criticizes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing and character development. D.H. Lawrence uses biblical allusion, brief syntax, and a cynical tone to support his argument that Hester is the responsible one in the crime of adultery.

What are considered boring events seldom make the news, what people really want to hear is the latest scandal of those placed on a pedestal so high that the slightest mistake causes them to come tumbling down. In The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, that is exactly the situation at hand. Hester Prynne had an affair with local minister Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, and because of this affair Hester becomes pregnant with Dimmesdale’s child. Scandals are not only in works of fiction, there are many scandals in the world that are quite similar to Hester’s. One of these scandals being actress Ingrid Bergman’s affair with director Roberto Rossellini in 1950.

Should Public Humiliation Be Used As A Punishment For Crime? In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses public humiliation to shame a puritan women named Hester Prynne for her sin of adultery. To punish her for her sin, the puritan officials of the community force her to wear a scarlet letter “A” upon her chest to publicly shame her and so that everyone in the community can mock her for her sin. Public humiliation is still used by people and by the government in some ways as a punishment.

Fear is an emotional response created amongst ourselves due to a sense of some sort of danger or threat. Fear is not only something one feels within but is also the root of the change in behavior. When fearing something or someone our first instinct is to hide or flee away from what is causing us to feel that way. It is an unpleasant emotion that only prevents a person from achieving their beliefs or goals.

The topics in The Scarlet Letter reflect towards the character’s physical and emotional health. Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale both share attributes that represent the topics of guilt. Each of the characters display guilt in their own way. Hester and Dimmesdale show guilt based off their physical appearance. Body language can expose internal problems, emotions, and deep secrets.

In our world today, many people find it difficult to seek the happiness and satisfaction in downhearted times. Thus making it strenuous and burdensome to strive for prosperity when hope seems impossible to find. Finding lightness in the darkness is a trait that not many people possess, so making the best out of a situation and finding the “light” is key to making a negative situation better. Many main characters in the novel The Scarlet Letter written by Arthur Miller possess these qualities.

Archetypes are symbols of the basic human motives. There are many different archetypes with their own set of values, traits, and emotions. The literary criticism, mythological, looks at the analysis of the monomyth; which explains how all stories are just different variations of each other. Archetypes explain how the characters, symbols, or places in the stories we read are all really just variations of one monomyth. The characters in The Scarlet Letter can be represented through the many of the universal archetypes.