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Public Humiliation In The Scarlet Letter

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Recommended: Critical analysis of scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Reality behind Public Humiliation
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, the character Hester Prynne is publically shamed for committing adultery. Hester is forced to stand upon a podium and is taunted and shunned by her fellow townspeople. Along with the exposure, she has to visibly wear the letter “A” attached to her chest for the rest of her life. In today’s society, public humiliation is still used occasionally as a possible form of punishment for the convicted. However, public embarrassment should not be used as a punishment for crime.
Public humiliation not only affects the person who fell victim to it, the third parties are affected as well. A family’s life is able to change in the hands of society. Families and friends will have …show more content…

For example, in the Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne could not show her face or her daughter Pearl’s face without being tormented. Authority constantly kept tabs on Pearl and Hester’s lives, taking away their freedom. Later on through the story, Hester’s punishment drained her beauty and confidence from her. The problem is that there are no official rules to humility. Today with social media changing the outlook of a person and the innocent third parties involved, the judge has no control on who is hurt. In other cases, loose ties within the punishment will allow punishment to be easier, taking away the lessons behind it. This will make the punishment a waste of time. Also, the threat of giving someone the power to embarrass another, is that it gives that person the power to abuse it. Judges, with a evil sickened way, will change the rules of the punishment making it worse than the crime committed. Not everyone in the world is strong-minded, nor do they have the ability to push through the punishment to return back to their ordinary lives.The horror of the experience, will destroy someone indefinitely. When looking at the benefits of the punishment, there are more cons to the public humiliation theory than pros. Therefore, it should be erased from the justice system’s methods of

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