Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romance, The Scarlet Letter, is set in Puritanical seventeenth-century Boston, Massachusetts. Detailing the life of Hester Prynne, a young woman who has an adulterous affair with the town minister, the novel addresses many aspects of Puritan expectations. The Puritans, known for their strict adherence to religious dogma, deem Hester a sinner and force her to wear a scarlet “A” on her chest, with the intent of displaying her passionate affair. Puritan ideology is simple: anything
The literary device of hyperbole is an exaggerated claim or statement that emphasizes a point. A rhetorical question has a similar effect in which it utilizes a question that does not require an answer to prove a point and persuade its audience. Thoreau uses these literary devices throughout his essay stresses multiple key points to persuade readers that living a simple life allows
The influence of Puritan society was major on Hawthorne and in The Scarlet Letter he uncovered and discarded the Puritan dogmass.As Michael J. Colacurcio notes in “ Doctrine and Difference: Essays in the Literature of New England that : “The Scarlet Letter must be seen as Hawthorne’s way of testing the limits of Puritan theology as a way of making sense out of some deep and passionate forms of human experience” (Colacurcio 1997:192) However , Hawthorne presented Puritans as hypocritical as Jim
The syntax in The Scarlet Letter mimics the previously mentioned dark yet romantic and descriptive tone of the novel. Maintaining its seriousness and formality, Hawthorne uses additions such as imagery, personification, metaphor, and symbolism to keep the book’s underlying flowery and romantic storyline. This complex writing style required Hawthorne to utilize very long and illustrative sentence structure. His dedication to detail is seen in his use of comparison to portray both beauty and ugliness
The Scarlet Letter is a symbolical novel in which Hawthorne used few major symbols as to represent the theme of sin though this novel is capable of interpretation in various ways. “The Scarlet Letter is so popular, generation after generation, because its beauty lies in the layers of meaning and the uncertainties of the symbols and characters” (Kirk, 2000: 7) The most important symbol that represent the theme of sin is the Scarlet Letter A forced on Hester Prynne by the Puritans. The whole plot
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gripping psychological romance, The Scarlet Letter, follows the life of adulteress Hester Prynne and the struggles she faces while living in the restrictive culture of 17th-century Puritan America. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne paints a reproachful and critical image of a repressive Puritan community that unjustly torments the protagonist Hester. He effectively portrays the deleterious influences of the religious doctrine by incorporating a number of literary devices including
seventeenth century Boston, Massachusetts, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the fortitude of the Puritan society as well as major imperfections of its beliefs and religion. Using his familiarity of the Puritan ways of life, Hawthorne not only expresses his fondness of the culture, but also institutes a concern for the judgmental and irrational behaviors that are enforced by the Puritan religion. Hugo McPherson has claimed, “Hawthorne’s rejection of the Calvinist view of human nature
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), is a worthy allegorical novel in which a young woman commits the sin of adultery with a local pastor and gets pregnant, once the townspeople realize they punish her by forcing her to use the symbol of adultery. Light and dark symbolisms can be reduced easily to white and black, hence to good and bad. For Hawthorne, the interplay between white and black, or light and dark does not serve a mere imagery purpose or a descriptive one. They are entrenched
In the midst of the Romantic period, specifically the year 1850, author Nathaniel Hawthorne published one of the most beautifully detailed and awe-inspiring books of the 18th century, The Scarlet Letter. This book, although a bit risque for its time period, became a popular novel all over the world due to its intricate use of symbols and themes. From the simplest items such as a prison to more complex concepts such as self-punishment, Hawthorne was able to brilliantly interweave these ideas throughout
If you were stuck having to live with a sin which everyone condemned you for, would you choose to be frail or strong? One may argue that the feeling of weakness itself has the ability to cause a great burden on them. Weakness itself can drastically affect a person physically and mentally. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, human weakness plays a significant role due to the fact that it progressively destroys the characters Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne who both committed adultery