Puritan’s harsh beliefs represented the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in the newly colonized America. Their community ruled with an iron fist: unforgiving, pitiless, stern. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses his disagreement with puritan priorities by revealing the hypocrisy widely practiced throughout their community. Hawthorne’s utilization of dim diction aids in the establishment of his scornful tone, while inclusion of symbols and intricate juxtaposition all serve to accentuate the Puritan’s duplicity. All these factors combine to develop a critical tone which rebukes puritan society.
Throughout the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates the Puritan community as judgemental. Naturally, humans attempt to hide their mistakes and imperfections from the world. The protagonists of the story battle with concealing their feelings of shame from the town. Hawthorne shows that self-isolation will inevitably lead to the destruction of one’s character, suggesting that those who admit to their sins are able to thrive. He accomplishes this by contrasting character changes between Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and Hester Prynne.
Life for the Puritans was, to say the least, not very exciting or enjoyable. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrates how Puritan society affects its citizen’s daily lives. In the overtly religious, strict town of Boston, morals and laws are greatly enforced. When the beautiful, young woman, Hester Prynn, commits adultery, the people of Boston respond angrily. The town minister, Dimmesdale, also feels the shame and burden of the sin committed.
Both of these literary structures are mainly associated with the beginning of the novel and set a lot of
Sprinkled Snickerdoodlepastasauce Scarlet Letter Essay Throughout the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne shifts from a disapproving tone in the beginning of the passage to a more hopeful tone near the end of the excerpt. During the initial parts of the text, Hawthorne utilizes Anglo-Saxon diction in order to convey a disapproving tone towards the Puritan Society. The author begins the text by immediately portraying the townsfolk as wearing “sad colored garments,” and “some [women] wearing hoods.”
When you think of a Puritan society, what comes to your mind? Perfect, flawless, and a religion based on following God? Well, that is what it says on paper, but is it really that perfect? Throughout the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne jabs at the Puritans in an attempt to portray just how flawed they really are. After reading the book, you want to think that Hawthorne is telling the story of sinning in a Puritan society.
In the first chapter of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of details, syntax, diction, and imagery help set the mood in the novel. In the first two paragraphs of the book, Hawthorne’s descriptions, such as "sad-colored garments", "gray, steeple-crowned hats", and "studded with iron spikes" connotate sadness, gloominess, and general unhappiness. Also, the group of Puritan settlers dressed in dark clothing surrounding the prison introduce a dark mood and fearfully apprehending tone. This shows that the Puritans are powerful and important characters in the story. Moreover, since the whole chapter is written in passive voice and does not comprise of a protagonist, a very ambiguous narrative tone is created.
An African American is sitting in the front of the bus. The bus stops and the police come to take the man away, but of course they say it’s only to keep the children safe. If Martin Luther King Jr. had never composed any of his speeches or provoked leadership, African Americans could still be segregated, have lower incomes, and still looked down upon. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Help by Kathryn Stockett both show what was used by Martin Luther King Jr. and so many others to gain equality. Courage can drive anybody to do more than what they thought was possible and that has led to people changing the world.
Both To Kill A Mockingbird and The Help took place in the south. More specifically Mississippi, one of the many similarities of the two stories. The two stories took place in different time frames, one in 1930’s and the other in 1960’s. Regardless of the time frames there are still many similarities but also many differences. Starting of with character comparison there are several characters with similar traits.
Harry Harlow wanted to see how a baby (separated from his mother 12 hours after birth) would react without a real mother present. He took a baby monkey and placed it in a cage with two fake mother. One “mother” was made of wire and the other was made of cloth. Some of the wire “mothers” had a bottle attached to it, and some of the cloth “mothers” had the bottle. Harlow was surprised to find that even when the wire “mother” had the bottle, the baby monkeys were still more attracted to the cloth mother.
Set in Puritan Massachusetts during the 17th Century, “The Scarlett Letter” is a tragically powerful book that was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in 1850. Hawthorne, moved and inspired by the transcendentalist movement, wrote this book to criticize the relentless puritan society and tells a tale of sin and punishment and the great wisdom one gains from suffering them, all while narrating the inner conflicts of the human heart. Hawthorne mainly focused on the theme of wisdom through suffering through deep symbolism, allegory, and descriptive emotive language, contrasting how each character’s behavior and thoughts change as the novel progresses signifying the character’s embracing of their sin and dealing with the harsh judgment
At just a glance at the back cover of The Scarlet Letter, a reader is immediately aware of the plot and the Puritan setting. If a reader receives some background knowledge, he or she learns that being apart of the community back then was not an easy task. With its harsh regulations, and strict, unlawful punishments, it is no wonder a citizen of this society would not act out of the Puritan lifestyle. In just the first couple of pages after they say Hester, Hawthorne describes the females of the community like evil villains from a Disney movie. When Prynne was initially exposed to the public, the women attacked her with criticism for she carried the beloved scarlet letter on her bosom as a sign of adultery.
In “The Scarlet Letter” he depicts it as an oppressive 17th – century Puritan society. “The style of Puritanism that Hawthorne presents is drab and gloomy, preoccupied with judgment and punishment, unrelenting and dogmatic,”1 writes Deborah L. Madsen in her book, “American Exceptionalism.” Hester Prynne, the main character accused of adultery, is persecuted by Boston community. Not only adults despise her, but also children who, blinded by the decayed values and norms, humiliate her and her child, Pearl. The character of Hester symbolizes the fight against Puritan enslavement, the need to modernize the prevailing norms that cause nothing but harm to American society.
The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, functions as an evaluation of Puritan ideas, customs, and culture during the 17th century. Through this evaluation, we can get a good idea of what core values and beliefs the Puritans possessed, as well as the actions they take in cases of adversity brought about by “sinners”. Some Puritan virtues created stark divisions between groups of people, some of which led to discrimination under certain circumstances. One of the most prominent of these is the treatment and standards of men and women, a concept that surfaced during some of the major points in The Scarlet Letter. The divisions that were created by Puritan standards of men and women played a great role in shaping the plot of The Scarlet Letter, determining the fate of many of the characters.
The opening scene, in which Hester stands on the scaffold and defiantly refuses to name her lover, signals a complex swerve of high or elite literature from the popular pressure toward legibility (5). The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne follows the lifestyle of Puritans in early America in many ways. One of the ways Hawthorne explores their lives is how they are punished for their sins over several contexts, such as family, the church, and state. There is the world of the Puritans, who recognize no distinction between the public and the private and who assume that all should be bared before the multitude; and there is the consciousness of the three central characters, who wrap themselves in secrecy (5). The punishments for sin of men and women, however, fluctuate over the course of the story.
