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The Puritans In Hawthorne's Short Story

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Although in this time period, the Puritans were seen as extremely devoted followers of God, they still seemed to be hypocrites as others of this time. In Hawthorne’s short story, when Goodman Brown gets to the meeting place of the devil and his fellow Puritans he sees the people who, “Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward” (37). Even though the Puritans went to church every Sunday and were always looking up to God, Hawthorne portrays them as secret sinners who meet with the Devil in the woods together, just as they meet at church every Sunday. Furthermore, after looking at all the familiar faces of his fellow Puritans’ deep in the mysterious woods, Goodman Brown points out one familiar face in particular, Goody Cloyse. Upon
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It became the obligation of every individual to keep in faith with the communal covenant with God. For Puritans, the Bible was God’s direct communication to humans and must be read daily. To commune with Satan, the “lord of evil”, or to enlist in the service of him by inscribing one’s name in a large, black book traced with blood, invited God’s wrath upon the villagers and exposed the entire community to the threat of divine retribution

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Puritans believed that God was constantly at work within their lives, tempting them as well as rewarding them (Winthrop). When God chose to warn people, he either chose to inflict the warning himself or he chose to do it through the Devil. For example, when Minister Cotton Mather’s infant son died suddenly, Mather knew that either the devil was acting in a witch who in turn harmed his child or it was the will of God to directly harm his son (Godbeer Document 3). Mather himself states, “I made little use of, and laid little stress on, this conjecture, desiring to submit unto the will of my heavenly father, without which not a sparrow falls unto the ground.” Another example of the devil working in the lives of the Puritans was interactions with Native Americans.

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By negatively depicting the Puritans with his depressing diction, Hawthorne establishes a scornful tone that highlights the Puritan’s

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An understanding of the Puritans is fundamental to understanding how the events in Salem could have taken place. Research the Puritans, their religious beliefs, and the kind of society they hoped to establish in the New World. To start off, who are and what are Puritans? The Puritans were a group of people who grew up in the Church of England and worked towards religious and morals.

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Salem is a Puritan community, and its occupants live in an extremely strict society. Although the Puritans left England to avoid religious commitment, they established a society in a America founded upon religious discrimination(Critical Essays Historical Period: Puritans in Salem, 2016). Government and religious authority are virtually inseparable, and the individuals who question the local authority are accused of questioning divine authority. The Puritan community considers physical labor and strict discipline to be a religious doctrine which is the best indicators of faithfulness, honesty, and integrity.

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Almost every Sunday morning you could find most of the population of Salem village in church. By 1692 denominations such as Presbyterians, Baptist, Quakers, Huguenots, and Anglicans had come to Massachusetts, but most of the people in Salem attended a Congregational service and called themselves Puritans. The Puritans, also known as Nonconformists, held a service each Sunday and were very traditional and set in their ways. The meeting house was set up with a pulpit at the front where the minister gave a sermon to the congregation each Sunday. The ministers of these churches were expected to be well educated and were paid with tax money in most of the cities in Massachusetts.

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Hypocrisy was one of the main themes in Puritan culture. God wanted everyone to do right by him , but the Puritans were committing a lot of transgressions. Jonathan Edwards' sermon expresses his opinion on why people should turn to god. He wanted them to beagle to turn to god , so he explained the uproar they’ll face going to hell . Jonathan Edwards alters the reader’s understanding of Puritan ideals of religion by using strong diction.

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The Plymouth Colony heard rumors that things in England were not good. Under Charles I, things were even worse for the religious nonconformists or "Puritans." They hoped to purify the Church of England but the king was adamantly against it. From 1630 to 1640 a large number Puritans sailed for a new life in Massachusetts. They wanted the freedom to practice their religion in peace and without fear of retribution.

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There are many Puritans stories out there, but only so many are popular. Most of the stories are about sin or about events that were unjustful. Injustice has been around for hundreds of years. It has torn families, friendships, and even towns. The theme of injustice is illustrated in Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Margaret Atwood’s “Half-Hanged Mary,” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” through the cruel ways people were being treated by others and themselves.

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For many years people have been wondering about religion in the US and, what exactly happened back then. Asking questions like, “Who are the Puritans?” People have also wondered about witches and, what people would do to them if they were caught. Well, I have some answers for you. Back in 1630s colonial New England there was a religious group called the Puritans, a Christian group that was known to be very religiously strict.

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With this setting, Hawthorne uses a character as a pawn in order to express his ideal of what is wrong with the Puritan faith, this character being Mr. Hooper. Hawthorne implies, through his depiction of Hooper’s beliefs and actions, that all humans are sinful and how all try to hide their sinfulness from one another because of how afraid mankind is to be singled out as evil, and viewed upon negatively by God. Mr. Hooper, the minister of the town’s church, is a man who would have been an ideal Puritan in their own terms. He was “self disciplined” (Hawthorne 1), a man of God, and someone envied by all. But Mr. Hooper was his own faith’s worst nightmare, a man full of sin.

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Conversely, Hawthorne did not trust man at all. He was a Transcendental Pessimist. He believed man was corrupt, and following his intuition would fail him in life. One of Hawthorne’s short stories, “Young Goodman Brown”, portrays the tale of a young Christian man who wanders into the forest and witnesses a witch-meeting that involves some of the people Goodman Brown thought to be some of the holiest people he knew: the church Deacon, the pastor, and even Brown’s own wife, Faith. After the witch-meeting incident in the woods, Brown wonders whether he witnessed the witch meeting, or if it was a creation of his own imagination: “quote”.

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Although the natural decider of one’s power in the Puritan society is land, the Devil, himself, holds ultimate power; despite the fact that he does not appear as a human figure, he controls the thoughts and actions of the Puritan

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In the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)

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A sense of accomplishment is invaluable to a person. Not only does a sense of accomplishment build confidence and faith in oneself, but it also allows one to reflect on how wonderful the journey to the accomplishment was, and how every little struggle and triumph was worth it. In the middle of summer, where time seems endless and the stress of the previous school year has been shed by students, I never expected to find out that I scored a five on both of the advanced placement exams I took. Nor did I have one-hundred percent confidence the goals we set as section leaders of the marching band would actually be met. Yet to my surprise, I had the good fortune of accomplishing challenging things in both aspects of my life.

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