Scapegoats In The Scarlet Letter And The Awakening

Scapegoats are a recurring theme throughout stories and literature in all different cultures. The concept of scapegoats first appears in the Book of Leviticus, where a goat is left in a desert far away from society taking the sins of the community with it. In more recent works, a scapegoat is someone who has been blamed for wrongdoings or mistakes. In society and in literature, people in power scapegoat those with less power as a way to blame problems on one specific person or group. Usually, the person being blamed is not at fault for what they’re being accused of, however, the person or group scapegoating has chosen them because they are an easy target. The use of scapegoats has been around since the beginning of humanity and although it

In ancient societies, scapegoats were very popular and there were even specific animals and people who would be sacrificed if something went wrong. I think that was done more as part of religious practice, but the idea of a scapegoat taking the blame still stands. The people would most likely have been criminals or problematic people in the society and who would easily be accepted as a scapegoat for any failures experienced. As time continued, scapegoats were not as

A scapegoat is a person or animal, which takes on the sins of others, or is unfairly blamed for problems. Examples that people in our society believe are scapegoats are immigrants, senior citizens and poor people. Still to this day our society follows tradition as the town’s people did in the story. The tradition some people do today is not as bad as the tradition used in the story. The scapegoat in the story helped support satire the author used so we as the readers want to change.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter captures the power of unrepented guilt and its ability to dominate the thoughts and actions of an individual. The destructive influence of guilt manifests itself through the suffering of Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected Puritan minister who is guilty of committing adultery with Hester Prynne. As a consequence of their illicit affair, Hester gives birth to their daughter Pearl, who serves as a living reminder of their crime. Although Dimmesdale’s sin remains undisclosed to the public, he is repeatedly tormented by Hester’s former husband, Roger Chillingworth, and falls victim to the mental anguish brought about by his guilty conscience. The minister continually attempts to atone for his sin and

One of the author’s purposes in delivering this literary piece to the public is to expose the hypocrisy of society. For example, when Hester chooses to accept her Scarlet Letter instead of wear it with shame, society looks at her as if there was something wrong with her conscience. Hawthorne states, “This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong, beneath” (Hawthorne 77). When Hester decides to use her needle work as a way to express herself and try to create a new identity with her letter, society thinks that there is something wrong with her, even though they were the ones who made her wear the Scarlet Letter. Another purpose of the novel is to show how easily society can isolate an individual just because of a mistake they made or a difference in their character. Hester Prynne deals with being an outcast after she made a mistake. First, she is sentenced to prison, and she is extremely isolated in her cell. Then, when Hester leaves the prison she is consistently judged and made felt different than the rest of society. Even though Hester is considered an outcast in society, she embraces it and continues to live her life as best she can.

The book, The Scarlet Letter, is about the struggle three people face while trying to live their lives and find happiness. In the early 1640s, Hester has come to the small town of Boston, Massachusetts, while her husband, Chillingworth, was back in Great Britain. Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale, the town 's priest, engage in the act of adultery and have a baby girl named Pearl, though only Hester knows that Dimmesdale is the father. She has promised Dimmesdale not to give up his identity. Hester is put on display in front of the whole town to punish her, She is then put in jail with her young child for a few months and is forever made to wear a scarlet letter "A," which stands for Adultery. Hester 's husband, Roger Chillingworth, who had been captured by native American Indians on his way to New England and held in captivity for two years, escaped and entered the town of Boston. After learning of what Hester had done, Chillingworth poses as a doctor and vows to discover the identity of Hester 's partner in sin. Hester agrees to keep his true identity a secret, too.

This novel has a total of 24 chapters, not including the preface and an introduction. The author organizes the novel by starting the reader at the middle of the story, where Hester Prynne is in custody for adultery. Then, the author proceeds to elaborate on how and why Prynne is in her current state and continues in chronological order. In other words, Hawthorne utilizes a narrative structure where the scarlet letter, A, is an extended metaphor that symbolizes a multitude of things: adultery, sin, charity, righteousness, grace, and the danger of merely thinking symbolically. It also compares and contrasts the current states of Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Arthur Chillingworth. With this, it has a logical progression to the book’s ultimate conclusion.

As I began my summer reading assignment I wasn’t too amused at the beginning chapters

b. Hester’s Home- Hester and Pearl live in a small cottage with a thatched roof on the outskirts of town

“No amount of guilt can change the past…” Umar Ibn Al-Khattab once spoke the truth that many refuse to believe, however, it is a well established theme in multiple books. His statement rings true for the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne but not in the article,“Guilt: Or Why it’s Good to Feel Bad” by Jane Brody. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester and Dimmesdale, adulterers from a Puritan society that is completely against what they did, force themselves to live in the past over their sin of adultery, which is certainly not one of the worst sins one can commit. In “Guilt: Or Why it’s Good to Feel Bad”, Dr. Gaylin talks about how feeling guilty is a good thing because it prevents people from being antisocial, it causes people to seek punishments for what they did wrong, and because it is so good, it is far from wasteful, however, in The Scarlet Letter, what Dr. Gaylin says is clearly untrue. Guilt causes Dimmesdale and Hester a great deal of useless pain, as they can never change the past and because they're so caught up in it, they can never change in the future, they seek harmful punishments for their actions, and Hester becomes antisocial and isolated from society.

Scapegoating: the action of blaming an individual or group for something when, in reality, there is no one person or group responsible for the problem. On a direct quotation, you must indicate the page number, if you used a printed document, or a ¶ number if your source is online.

Reading ' 'The Scarlet Letter ' ' again, I imagine Hester Prynne as she steps out of the Boston jail. She carries her out-of-wedlock baby in her arms but does not hide the ' 'A ' ' she wears on her breast. Her crime, though it will never be named in the book by more than an initial, is placed on exhibition. Yet she has converted the letter into her own statement by fantastic flourishes of gold embroidery. She is a mystery beyond the reach not only of her fellow Bostonians but also of the reader. To the end of her story she will be someone whose final meaning is as obscure as her reasons for blazoning the letter so that it looks like a badge of honor while it reinforces her condemnation.

The town punishes Hester for what she has done, but they also, without knowing, that they also punish Dimmesdale for his guilt. In the start of The Scarlet Letter Hester is asked who she has committed adultery with by Dimmesdale. He know who should be up on the scaffold with her, but he asks to see if she will convulse the information to the town. She does not tell the town who the father is, so Dimmesdale’s guilt starts. Throughout the novel Dimmesdale’s physical and mental health decline. The main cause for this is him not sharing that he is Pearl’s father. He feels that he has let punished Hester more by having her suffer, not just her punishment, but also his. Dimmesdale displays his guilt during the scene when the governor wants to take Pearl away from Hester. Hester pleads against the governor saying that they should not take away the only thing she loves. Hester also says that Pearl may be the way that she can amend her sin. Dimmesdale throughout this section refuses to make eye contact with Hester. This action from Dimmesdale shows that he regrets not telling the town at the beginning what he did. Now the guilt has built up and he starts to have the effects of this mentally as well as physically change him. When Chillingworth starts to torture him he starts to become afraid of both what will happen to him as well as fear from the secrecy of Chillingworth. Chillingworth recites a story about a new herb he has found “I found the flowers growing on a

Michele Willens, a writer for The Atlantic, states, “For male writers, trying to navigate the evolving battles of the sexes is more challenging. To their credit, they are not necessarily shying away from tackling women in their work, but are they 'getting' them?” (Willens 2). The proposed question has plagued the minds of literary analysts since as far back as the creation of the Bible: can a man properly write the role of a female protagonist? At first glance, in modern society it may not seem as large of a margin between the writing styles and literary voice of men and women in literature. However, when examining texts from the past, it becomes very clear just how different the authenticity of a male writing in a female voice does not compare to a female writing about a female protagonist. By examining the contrast of the female protagonists in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Kate Chopin's The Awakening, it becomes evident that it is fundamentally impossible for a man to accurately illustrate the complexity of a female protagonist.

In the modern world our society feel threatened in a way so they react in a way of blaming someone else to get them out of what ever trouble our society is in. Margaret Atwood’s idea is that a society under stress will always put blame on a person or a group of people. A clinical psychologist Noel Hunter says in Mad in America, “When people are afraid, they need to feel a sense of control”(1). Control may be come up when blame is given and scapegoats are named. When people get scared they feel the way of gaining control is to start blaming others.