Literary Selection In The Scarlet Letter

What is the significance of the scarlet letter A which is embroidered on Hester’s gown?

In his book, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells of a story where a young woman has had an adulterous relationship with a respected priest in a Puritan community. Typical of Hawthorne's writings is the use of imagery and symbolism. In Chapter 12, The Minister's Vigil, there are several uses of imagery when Dimmesdale, the priest, is battling with confessing his sin, which has plagued him for seven years. Three evident techniques used to personify symbolism in this chapter are the use of darkness versus light, the use of inner guilt versus confession, and lastly the use of colors (black versus white).

     In Hawthorne's revered novel The Scarlet Letter, the use of Romanticism plays an important role in the development of his characters. He effectively demonstrates individualism in Hester to further our understanding of the difficulties of living in the stern, joyless world of Puritan New England.  It is all gloom and doom.  If the sun ever shines, one could hardly notice.  The entire place seems to be shrouded in black.  The people of this society were stern, and repressed natural human impulses and emotions than any society before or since.  But for this reason specifically, emotions began bubbling and eventually boiled over, passions a novelist

Human nature drives individuals to define the most perplexing concepts; however, understanding the true meaning refers to more than its denotation. The definition of justice proves to be a conflicting view point, dating back to Socrates’s attempted explanation in Plato’s The Republic. Within the first book, Socrates finds himself exposing the flaws behind three definitions of justice proposed by the traditionalists of Athens. Through Socrates’s ridicule of physical attributes equating to justice, he disproves these perceived virtues and conveys the necessity for a lack of physicality.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a brilliant writer of the 19th century. Hawthorne created a novel that reflected the time period of the Puritans in New England. The Scarlet Letter contains a representation of the people during that time period but can also be related to the reader’s time period. Originally, God created the world with complete perfection until man fell, and sin entered the world. In the eyes of God, a sin is a sin. There is no worse sin that one can commit. Man is the one that decided that one sin could be more harshly judged than another. Hawthorne uses the theme of sin to show the importance of one’s faith and conviction and how those principles relate to fallen sinners.

The Scarlet Letter Introduction The Scarlet Letter is a classic tale of sin, punishment, and revenge. It was written in 1850 by the famous American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It documents the lives of three tragic characters, each of whom suffer greatly because of his or her sins. Shot Plot The story begins with Hester Prynne, a resident of a small Puritan community, being led from the town jailhouse to a public scaffold where she must stand for three hours as punishment for adultery. She must also wear a scarlet A on her dress for the rest of her life as part of her punishment. As she is led to the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd complain that

Theology and Human Qualities Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter explores the elaborate theocracies of a seventeenth-century Puritan town in which the character Hester Prynne resides. Hawthorne suggests that human nature and its ability to make mistakes are caused by humanity’s innately imperfect nature. He shows the disbalance of power towards Puritan religious leaders as they control and shame those whose mistakes become visible. If one does not stay within the socially constructed borders, he or she becomes a threat to Puritan social order.

     In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s American classic The Scarlet Letter the main character Hester Prynne is portrayed as the preeminent feminist heroine through the portraiture of her crime and punishment. In this novel, a Puritanical society in New England condemns Hester Prynne to wear a highly embossed depiction of the letter “A” on her breast as punishment for an act of adultery. How Hester handles the consequences of her castigation is what brings about the heroic feministic qualities of the main character. Three aspects that corroborate Hester Prynne’s qualities are: 1. Admitting her sin openly to fellow man and God, 2. Putting up with the taunting and social exile of

How does one's imagination play a role in gothic literature and how does it affect your mind to make it believe what's real and what's not? Gothic literature is writing that usually gives readers a sort of adrenaline but also gives them feelings of dread, fear, suspense and paranoia to the readers. Gothic literature is not only about feeling fear, but also about how the gothic stories and the different elements used make you feel like your mind is mentally in the book. Imagination overcomes reason when you get into another dimension that is not reality, as seen in "The House Taken Over," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "Where is Here?" These books all mess with your imagination because they take you away from what's real and what's not

The settings in The Scarlet Letter are very important in displaying the themes of the novel. The settings in this novel are almost characters, for they are an important part in developing the story. The scaffold, the forest, the prison, and Hester’s cottage are settings that show sin and its consequences result in shame and suffering.

Romanticism is categorized as “a preference for simplicity and naturalness, a love of plain feelings and truth to common place reality, especially as found in natural scenes”. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an anti-transcendentalist and believed in the dark side of man, hence his dark romantic novel The Scarlet Letter. This allegorical novel depends heavily on symbol and character. The novel is chock full of symbolic dimension of images, characters, and descriptions. The Scarlet Letter defines the American Romanticist movement while using symbolic characters and places that give the book seemingly two different stories. The first story denotes the story going on in the book, including the characters. The other story has symbols that speak on

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author presents three symbols that all reinforce the main idea of the novel. The main idea that reoccurred throughout the novel is that people don’t have to let their mistakes or circumstances determine who they are or what they become; it’s all in how one interprets life. Many symbols may seem as just an ordinary character or coincidental object to some readers, but the symbols have a deeper, underlying meaning. Although there are many symbols in this book, there are three that really help support the main idea: Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter, the meteor, and Hester’s daughter Pearl.

The Scarlet Letter Critical Analysis Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, the direct descendant of John Hawthorne, and a judge at the infamous Salemwitchcraft trials. The guilt that Hawthorne felt over the actions of his ancestor had an enormous impact on his writings. In his introduction of "The Scarlet Letter", Hawthorne accepts the guilt from his forefathers and offers to repent for their crimes (Waggoner, 5). This unusual way of viewing guilt and sin is one driving factor in Hawthorne's writing. The other, which is closely related to the first, is the relationship between men, and of man to humanity as a whole.

A Puritans FollyNever forget that only dead fish swim with the stream. -Malcolm Muggeridge. This famous quote justifies that to be an individual, one must break from society and think for himself, and only when he has done this, is he truly alive. Nathaniel Hawthornes novel The Scarlet Letter is about a courageous woman, Hester Prynne, and her struggle to split from society in order to live the loving life she has always wanted. By the use of symbolism, Hawthorne is effectively able to portray the forest, which promotes individuality, and the town, which rewards conformity. The clothes portrayed by the Puritans, the town, are dull and plain whereas those expressed by the Romantics, the forest, are vivid and eccentric. Also, the various

        In reality, the Scarlet Letter is many things. It has all the characteristics of a modern-day soap opera, but it is way more than some television show cast on ABC. It could be a sermon being shouted from a church attendee, but no; the Puritans are surely not the heroes in this novel. It could be a story of failure, for there are many failures cast upon the main characters, or it could be a story of revenge from an angry husband. And, maybe it could even be a story of creativity-- the attempt of one to see their artistic side in a community who disapproves a mind of imagination. The novel could mean a multitude of things, only noticed