...Title of Work: The Scarlet Letter Author’s Name: Nathaniel Hawthorne Date of Publication: Genre: Fiction Setting: The Scarlett Letter is set in the middle of the seventeenth century, in a time where there were strict religious values. Major Characters: Hester Prynne is the main character or this book, and hence the book’s title she wears a scarlet on her clothing which is a large letter “A”. This letter means that she is an adulterer, which means that she cheated on her husband. Her husband, an old man named Chillingworth had sent her to America to start a life for them, but when there she had an affair with a young stud named Dimmesdale, and with him she had a daughter named Pearl. Hester is a strong willed woman as she deals with years of shame from her past actions, and as the continues to live in her community she notices their way of treating women and makes good observations. Pearl is Hester’s daughter that she had with Dimmesdale. She has an unique ability to see things that others do not, for example she finds out the truth about her mother and Dimmesdale, and the townspeople say that’s is devil’s spawn since her father was unknown. She is a smart girl that has a wild imagination. Arthur Dimmesdale is the man friend of Hester Prynne, and the father of Pearl. As a pastor he is tormented by what he has done with Hester, as it goes against what he has been studying and teaching to the masses. To try and overcome this he continuously beats himself mentally...
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...In "The Scarlett Letter", written in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne establishes commodity into the relationships between characters. Commodity in a relationship is where people must have a profit or gain something from the relationship otherwise they will not be apart of the relationship. The main victim of this commodity is Hester Prynne. The reason behind her rejections is because of her sins as an adulterer and social status cause many townsmen and regular people to reject her and avoid her at all costs. The other people in these relationships include Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth. Perhaps the most important relationship in The Scarlet Letter is Roger Chillingworth and Hester Prynne. Although their relationship doesn't...
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...In, The Scarlett Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates the life and punishment of Hester Prynne and her companions in the New England Puritan society. In particular, Reverend Dimmesdale and Dr. Chillingworth are two who are punished. They are not punished directly such as a whipping or torture, but are forced to bear guilt and personal shame which can lead to mental torture. These repressed feelings lead to the different eccentric actions though out the book these were first thought to control actions by Sigmund Freud "human beings are motivated by unconscious desires, fears, needs, and conflicts", as displayed by Dimmesdale and Chillingworth(Freud Slide3). Repressed feelings cause people to have an influenced opinion of themselves and certain...
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...what American Literature is in itself and which pieces of writing we can include within this label. It is believed that when a piece is written in North America, more precisely in the USA, it would automatically be given this epithet. But it should be taken into account that this idea is quite broad and doesn’t reflect the real essence of the term. However, there is also another definition that gathers this essence: American Literature is the one that represents the Americanism, the singularity of the USA philosophy and culture. This way, instead of focusing on who the author is, it is focused on the content of the writing. In that which concerns Fiction, the following documents are the ones considered as narrative: Speeches Letters Short Stories Essays Political Documents Sermons Novels Diaries 1 FIRST LITERARY EXPRESSIONS The first documents in which the idea of Americanism is very present are the Sermons. They respond to the strict Protestantism settled in the New Continent after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans in the Mayflower (1620) and the Arabella (1630). They established a theocratic community whose main and only point of reference was the Bible. That is why the idea of the ‘city upon a hill’ is still very present in American mentality. As we all know, their community was also governed by the concept of Predestination. This belief was based in the idea that we are...
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