The Scarlet Letter Essays and Research Papers Page 2

Puritanism In The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses the aspects of relationships, religion, community, discipline and punishment in the puritan community of 17th century Boston. Relationships between men and women were very constrained and that is what made adultery such a bad sin in the eyes of everyone in the community….

The Letter A is a mark of punishment and humiliation. However , Hester Prynne carries the symbol upon her with a very different out look than the puritans intended. Hester and the Puritans both have strong feelings for this Scarlet Letter but both will not come to terms and define a universal meaning for this…

Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter deals with many themes, the most powerful being punishment. In this novel, Hester Prynne becomes a highly respected person in a Puritan society by overcoming one of the harshest punishments, the scarlet letter. This object on “her bosom”; however, does the exact opposite of that which it was meant for. Eventually,…

Writing under the influence of his Puritan background, Hawthorne’s attention was on individuals and their relationships within their community. Theocratic Puritans punished sinners as deviants of society and used the punishments to restate the boundaries within the group. The five tenets of Puritanism reveal the curious nature of a religion that promoted goodness as a…

With his critical essay: “Hawthorne’s Awakening in the Customhouse” Loving gives the reader a psychoanalytical reading of The Scarlet Letter. Loving pays close attention to Hawthorne’s unconscious motives and feelings in his interpretation of Hawthorne’s writing. He is particularly concerned about the radical change of direction that Hawthorne takes in altering the initial course of…

.. because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them, no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go among their fellow creatures looking pure as new-fallen snow while their hearts are all looking speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves. Dimmesdales…

American authors, of two distinctly different time periods had one very similar task, to turn a piece of American History into a believable tragedy. Arthur Miller with The Crucible and Nathaniel Hawthorne with The Scarlet Letter. Perhaps one might wonder which author did a better job in doing so, but with such different pieces of…