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Scarlet letter analysis essay
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Symbolism of the scarlet letter
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Scarlet letter analysis essay
Scarlet letter analysis free essay
Symbolism of the scarlet letter
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they would say to strangers. ‘It is our Hester, the town’s own Hester, who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick…”(147) Through her benevolent deeds over the years, Hester had managed to merge herself into the society that once scorned her. They no longer speaks badly of her, but would instead brag about her kind and caring nature to strangers. The most obvious change in their perception of Hester also lies in the reinterpretation of the letter “A” on her chest, which would now signify Able, resembling the strength of her heart.
Hayley Babbitt Period 2 Mr. Nelson 9/22/2015 AP Lang Scarlet Letter discussion questions Custom House Notes: -written just after he was fired from the Salem Custom House in 1849. -original manuscript of The Scarlet Letter is lost, and house printing style was imposed on the 1850 edition, so that version varies occasionally from Hawthorne 's spelling, capitalization, and word division in manuscripts of the same time period. -"Custom-House " sketch is a blend of fact and fantasy. In it Hawthorne does refer to real people, places, and events in Salem, and he also uses this first chapter to introduce the fictional Hester Prynne who wears the scarlet letter that the narrator finds in the Custom House attic.
He didn’t like that he had Puritan ancestry, he was ashamed of it. Hawthorne was a transcendentalist and he made the main character, Hester Prynne one too. This shows how he truly felt and his views on his ancestors. Puritans and transcendentalists were two different groups of people. However, both were clearly used in The
In the Scarlet Letter, the most obvious example of irony is the fact that Reverend Dimmesdale is Hester’s counterpart and fellow adulterer. Dimmesdale’s sin is dramatically ironic because the readers catch on to it much sooner than most of the characters in the story. The audience slowly realizes that Dimmesdale was Hester’s companion because of several events. First, whenever he is to speak about Hester or on the topic of sins, he becomes very pale and shaky. He also progressively appears sicker and more gaunt due to the guilt that builds up inside his body and consumes his mind.
What do witchcraft and embroidery have to do with each other? Well, the answer is the texts of The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne and The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Hawthorne’s piece tells the story of a woman who bore a child out of wedlock to her Reverend and she is forced to wear an embroidered letter A for the rest of her life. Miller’s piece is a focus on the mass hysteria of the Salem Witch trials, in which, “Nineteen men and women were hanged, one was pressed to death, and over a hundred others were imprisoned and impoverished” (Hill).
The letter gave Hester a new power to sympathize with and be charitable to others. Townspeople even began to interpret the letter very differently from its original meaning. They began to believe that the symbol no longer meant adultery, however, its new significance was to mean “Able” (111). Her selfless acts of kindness attracted the attention of the community as she did needlework for the poor in her spare time. The community did not know the true reason of why Hester did this, but the act caused her true character and natural instinct to be generous to be reflected.
Although the community originally knew Hester as a disgrace, the town’s opinion of her changed over time as she began to do work for the poor and needy. After this shift in the town’s view of Hester, “many people refused to interpret the scarlet [letter] by its original signification” (111). Instead of Hester’s scarlet letter serving as a reminder of her scandalous sin, her peers “ had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as a token . . . of [Hester’s] many good deeds” (111). She became known for her charity and generosity, which caused the civilians to overlook her sinful behavior.
This shows that Hester does not necessarily need to worry about what the people of Boston think of her or how she needs to redeem herself in order to fit back into the society. When Hawthorne says “The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!” he is showing how there is no way for Hester to change her society. She should have love and joy, but instead she is faced with guilt, which leads to her downfall. Along with this, Hawthorne demonstrates how the people of Boston are actually the sinners while Hester and Dimmesdale represent the Angel and the Saint of the city.
Because even her name conjures up many conflicting thoughts, the true nature of Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is heavily debated among critics. Mark Van Doren and D.H. Lawrence both assert their conflicting perspectives with a multitude of convincing devices, but D.H. Lawrence more effectively portrays Hester Prynne as an enemy through the use of thought-provoking allusions, critical diction and repetition, and an unconventional syntax in his essay, On Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne’s iniquity is foremost illustrated by Lawrence’s use of several biblical allusions. Although Hester shows benevolence throughout the novel and came to be respected in society, Lawrence asserts that this whole persona is a lie.
She is a beautiful, young woman who has sinned, but is forgiven. Hawthorne portrays Hester as "divine maternity" and she can do no wrong. Not only Hester, but also the physical scarlet letter, a sign of shame, is shown as a beautiful, gold and colorful piece which
Nathaniel Hawthorne, a famous American author from the antebellum period, notices the emphasis on individual freedoms in the works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists during his residency in the Brook Farm’s community. In response to these ideas, Hawthorne writes The Scarlet Letter, a historical novel about Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale’s lives as they go through ignominy, penance, and deprecation from their Puritan community to express their strong love for each other. Their love, even though it is true, is not considered as holy nor pure because of Hester past marriage to Roger Chillingworth, and thus Hester gained the Scarlet Letter for being an adulterer. Hawthorne utilizes biblical allusions, such as the stories of
The townspeople “[began] to look upon the scarlet letter as a token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” This quote exemplifies how sin is not a death sentence for Hester. Through hard work and charity it allowed the rigid Puritan society to see her as something different, and as someone who would not let society define who she was. Hester, thus, was not only able to change herself, but also the image in which society viewed her by working hard to benefit the public. Likewise, the scarlet letter which was supposed to represent sin was instead “fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.”
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln and the excerpt from the “Funeral Oration”by Pericles distinctly describe a democratic government. But which democracy is more “true”? The Athenian and American democracy have their many differences. The Gettysburg Address
“The Steam engine, the cotton spinning machinery, and the manufacture of iron with coal and coke deserve their renown, for invention on this scale wan unprecedented, and it inaugurated an era of industrial expansion and further technological innovation that changed the world”. In the early 1800’s people lived in the countryside as women and men worked as predominantly farmers, but during the mid-1800’s new machines that used steam and coal were able to produce goods at a massive scale. This is known as the Industrial Revolution. This revolution started in Europe, mainly Britain, and expanded to the entire world.
The hypocritical society is blinded by how they should punish Hester that they are not showing kindness to Hester. Hawthorne creates the book to show how an individual spirit must overcome the difficult obstacles in the society cultural