Essays on Hester Prynne

When Herman Melville was writing, capital punishment was a much more commonly used punishment than it is in our own time, and as much as modern death penalty opponents talk about the mistaken use of it in cases when the convict has been wrongly sentenced, the swiftness of the execution and the shoddiness of the evidentiary requirements in Melville’s time were comparatively barbaric. Captain Vere is typical of the sort of judge who would have rendered that sentence in that day, brought in at the last moment and then hearing a fairly swift (and legally shaky) summary of ...

Introduction

The novel, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, has a protagonist named Hester Prynne who was forced to live in solitude for her act of adultery. The novel is phased in the era of 1960s which is almost two centuries prior to its year of publication and aims at explaining the plight of a woman who was forced to live with the imposed consequences by the members of the Puritan community in the city of Salem, Massachusetts. With respect to the analysis of her character in the novel, there are some stark contradictions affixed to her ...

Hester is the hero of the novel. She is portrayed as an energetic, lovely, lively, and glad lady. When she is initially introduced in the story, there is as of now an embarrassment joined to her name that is symbolized by the red letter "A". She holds her head high and stays in full general visibility without shedding a tear when she goes to jail. Her soul is likewise reflected in her brightening the red letter with gold string. Hester's quality of character out in the open, is truth be told, her method for steeling herself against her inward ...

Bad faith in The Scarlet Letter

It can be really difficult to come to a decision when the outside world persuades you to meet your own wishes first. Being by nature a weak-willed creature, people are inclined to rash actions and misguided dealings. We are, at times, sneaky and foolish. Sometimes even the good intentions we may have and a deep longing to act justly may also be seen as a display of bad faith. According to Sartre, bad faith is the use of freedom without the acknowledgement of its presence (Detmer 203). Being consciously aware of their bad conduct, people still refuse to ponder ...

When the young woman – the mother of this child – stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novels can be perceived as significant and resilient records of the contemporary Puritan society, disclosing the social and religious order prevalent at that time. His novels portray the clash between the individual and moral values and virtues and social goodness and ethical codes. Laurence Sargent Hall says: “The moral problem to be found wherever the individual’s mal- adjustment to society culminates in sin furnished Hawthorne with his major tragic themes. In the main this problem is worked out through some resolution by the individual of his mal- adjustment, an expiation of sin, by coming to ...

Question 11 - New World for the Puritans

What is now called the USA was initially the discovered new world of Columbus. Many people decided to build a new life there and travel hundreds of kilometers from their home in the UK or somewhere else in Europe. Some left in search of religious freedom, some – for seeking a new and better life, other were forced to go there either by someone or by the circumstances of their life. This was a new start for all. A new and better world was to be built. Puritans decided it was their calling to build and purify the existing social standards. Small ...

The Long Black veil, is a song composed by Johnny Cash and expresses numerous elements similar to the ones discussed by Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter. These two pieces of literature expounds on the theme regarding the sin of adultery that ultimately hurts the characters in the stories. In the song Long Black Veil, a man is falsely charged with murder. However, he fails to give an alibi since, on the night when another man was killed, the man was having an affair with the wife of his best friend, and he claims that he would rather die and take ...

The aim of this essay is to present you with a review of chapters 22-24 of the book ‘The Scarlet Letter’. Barlow (2000) refers to this book as ‘The magnum opus’ of Nathaneal. (Barlow, 2000). ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is a story of love, adultery, betrayal, faith, belief and social criticism which was published in 1850 and holds a little bit of all these elements which can attribute to it the characterization of being a romantic novel. The historical context of the novel’s plot is the social environment of the society living and developing in the area of Puritan Salem, in Massachusetts ...

[Institution Title]

Background of the Study

A useful lesson to illustrate a major pedagogical theory in education involves a close reading lesson given in the ninth grade English class. Many high schools English teachers report that their students lack the skill of reading a passage, whether fiction or non-fiction, and successfully draw inferences and figurative meanings or even critically analyze the readings. These figurative meanings are crucial to understanding the rhetorical argument of the piece, making this a vital skill. Furthermore, writing is also as complex a learning activity as reading that fosters the act of critically arranging the words to make perfect sense.

Theoretical Framework

The proposed activity emanates ...

Thesis Statement 1: Society has a way of punishing people they envy by emphasizing the latter’s weakness and making a ridicule out of that individual only to boost their personal worth. - Claim: When the beautiful and poised Hester Prynne arrived at Boston, she came alone awaiting for the arrival of her husband Roger Chillingworth, however, to everyone’s knowledge. This made the women of Boston threatened by her.

Interpretation: That left the young, beautiful and poised Hester Prynne the interest of men. This grew the displeasure of the women of Boston. - Claim: Many believed that Hester ...

An Explanation of How Hester Prynne Portrays the Author’s View

of America’s Transition from Puritanism to Romanticism 3 pages, double-spaced

Times New Roman, 12 pt

869 words Page set up: U.S. Letter 5 citations

MLA format

The novel, The Scarlet Letter, was written by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne and was published in 1850 (1). It is a story about the Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, set around 1650 (2). The story is written in the third person with the narrator being the author. The common thread that runs through this novel is Hawthorne’s apparent understanding of the beliefs and culture of the Puritans in America at that time. But ...

The aim of this essay is to present you with an analysis of the symbolism lying in the book ‘The Scarlet Letter’ which belongs to the genre of romantic novels and was published in 1850. Barlow (2000) refers to this book as ‘The magnum opus’ of Nathaneal.(Barlow, 2000). ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is a story of love, adultery, betrayal, faith, belief and social criticism. It is a story that has a little bit of all these elements which can attribute to a piece of writing the characterization being a romantic novel. The historical context of the novel’s plot is the social environment ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 novel depicting the treatment of adulterous Hester Prynne in Puritan-era Boston, after her sin is discovered. This depiction of Puritan America is close to the author's heart; having been born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804, Hawthorne was likely fascinated by his region's Puritan past (particularly his ancestor John Hathorne, who was one of the judges during the Salem witch trials of 1692 (Miller 20-21). In investigating the attitudes and anxieties of the people living in colonial New England, Hawthorne explores the xenophobia, religious intolerance, and daily struggles of the people who ...

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the claim made on the greatly renowned classic novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. I would claim that the novel portrays various characters where it would be acceptable to mention and link them to the very controversial topic Women and Honor Killings. This paper clarifies how the story of the Scarlet Letter is a fine example of how women and honor killings occur in different societies and cultures and also with proper evidences it will be made further clear how this claim can be interrelated with the Hawthrone’s story and characters of ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is the narrative of a fallen woman whose story is not the result of her own innate character, but of social forces which execute their power upon her and the subsequent transformations that these forces evoke. Thus, the personal opinion of this reader is that Hester Prynne truly is a courageous heroine who, prone to flaws like all human beings, makes a choice, which changes her life forever. Whether it was a wrong choice or a feat any of us would endeavor upon is questionable, because as it was said, it is not so much Hester’s instinctive ...

It should be no surprise that the idea of utopia has often been explored by American writers, since one could argue that America itself exists as a sort of utopian ideal. The words of the Declaration of Independence posit a sort of utopia in their idealistic talk of ’life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ This is very bound up with the notion of America as a new world, a new place where fresh starts can be made and the mistakes of the past avoided: The utopian passages in Euro-American writings tended to elevate American spaces and colonists by comparing them to ...