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The Scarlet Letter, By Nathaniel Hawthorne Essay - 1963 Words

The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, takes place during the 17th century in Puritan Boston, where a woman, Hester Prynne, has committed adultery with the Reverend, Arthur Dimmesdale; she is then forced to eternally wear a scarlet letter on her bosom as punishment for that sin. While coming out of prison with the child that resulted from her infidelity. Hawthorne strategically employs nature in his novel for remarkable imagery, insight into characters, and an underlying theme within the book. In this novel, nature is used with both of its definitions, the natural forces and human nature itself. The theme of nature has allowed The Scarlet Letter to illustrate the dichotomies within the book. Also, in The Scarlet Letter, physiognomies and descriptions of nature around characters correspond with their own human nature and how it changes. Conclusively, nature plays a crucial role in The Scarlet Letter; it foreshadows action, recurs as an important theme that also indicates character, and reflects the changes in the characters behavior and beliefs. In the Scarlet Letter, there are two different meanings to the recurring theme of nature. First, it is used as the natural forces impacting the characters, and second, it is used as human nature that is typified in the book through descriptions. For example, in the beginning of the novel, the referrals to the natural world contrast greatly. The contrast ranges from the beautiful, wild rose-bush and the deep heart ofShow MoreRelatedThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1242 Words   |  5 PagesLYS PAUL Modern Literature Ms. Gordon The Scarlet Letter The scarlet letter is book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne who is known as one the most studied writers because of his use of allegory and symbolism. He was born on July 4, 1804 in the family of Nathaniel, his father, and Elizabeth Clark Hathorne his mother. Nathaniel added â€Å"W† to his name to distance himself from the side of the family. His father Nathaniel, was a sea captain, and died in 1808 with a yellow fever while at sea. That was aRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne960 Words   |  4 Pages3H 13 August 2014 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 Hawthorne is writing about events in a societyRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter, By Nathaniel Hawthorne919 Words   |  4 Pagessymbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"The Scarlet Letter†. Symbolism is when an object is used in place of a different object. Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most symbolic writers in all of American history. In â€Å"The Scarlet Letter†, the letter â€Å"A† is used to symbolize a variety of different concepts. The three major symbolistic ideas that the letter â€Å"A† represents in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"The Scarlet Letter† are; shame, guilt, and ability. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"The Scarlet Letter†, the firstRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1397 Words   |  6 PagesFebruary 2016 The Scarlet Letter was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 which is based on the time frame of the Puritans, a religious group who arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630’s. The Puritans were in a religious period that was known for the strict social norms in which lead to the intolerance of different lifestyles. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the puritan’s strict lifestyles to relate to the universal issues among us. The time frame of the puritans resulted in Hawthorne eventually thinkingRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne999 Words   |  4 Pages Nathaniel Hawthorne is the author of the prodigious book entitled The Scarlet Letter. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, soon finds out about the incident after it becomes clear that she is pregnant. The whole town finds out and Hester is tried and punished. Meanwhile, Roger Chillingworth goes out then on a mission to get revenge by becoming a doctor and misprescribing Dimmesdale. He does this to torture DimmesdaleRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne1037 Words   |  5 Pagesthat human nature knows right from wrong, but is naturally evil and that no man is entirely â€Å"good†. Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of the classic novel The Scarlet Letter, believes that every man is innately good and Hawthorne shows that everyone has a natural good side by Hester’s complex character, Chillingworth’s actions and Dimmesdale’s selfless personality. At the beginning of the Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne is labeled as the â€Å"bad guy†. The townspeople demand the other adulterer’s name, butRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1517 Words   |  7 PagesNathaniel Hawthorne composes Pearl as a powerful character even though she is not the main one. Her actions not only represent what she is as a person, but what other characters are and what their actions are. Hawthorne makes Pearl the character that helps readers understand what the other characters are. She fits perfectly into every scene she is mentioned in because of the way her identity and personality is. Pearl grows throughout the book, which in the end, help the readers better understandRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter, By Nathaniel Hawthorne1488 Words   |  6 Pages In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, the main character, Hester Prynne, is a true contemporary of the modern era, being cast into 17th century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts. The Scarlet Letter is a revolutionary novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne examining the ugliness, complexity, and strength of the human spirit and character that shares new ideas about independence and the struggles women faced in 17th century America. Throughout the novel, Hester’s refusal to remove the scarlet letterRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1319 Words   |  6 PagesPrynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are subject to this very notion in Nathaniel Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter. Hester simply accepted that what she had done was wrong, whereas Dimmesdale, being a man of high regard, did not want to accept the reality of what he did. Similar to Hester and Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth allows his emotions to influence his life; however, his influence came as the result of hi s anger. Throughout the book, Hawthorne documents how Dimmesdale and Hester s different ways of dealingRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1714 Words   |  7 PagesSome two hundred years following the course of events in the infamous and rigid Puritan Massachusetts Colony in the 1600s, Nathaniel Hawthorne, descendant of a Puritan magistrate, in the 19th century, published The Scarlet Letter. Wherein such work, Hawthorne offered a social critique against 17th Massachusetts through the use of complex and dynamic characters and literary Romanticism to shed light on said society’s inherent contradiction to natural order and natural law. In his conclusive statements

Portrayal Of Religion In Literature Free Essays

Religion plays an important role in every man’s life. Its impact is manifested on every person daily affairs and his or her behavior. Hundreds of literatures that explicitly tackle religion have already been written. We will write a custom essay sample on Portrayal Of Religion In Literature or any similar topic only for you Order Now While the list may be inexhaustible, the Metamorphoses, Aeneid, Inferno and Odyssey serve as some of the popular literary works where a religious strand can be looked into. The fact that the Metamorphoses by Ovid composed of mythological stories printed in the form of poetry gives one the first impression that divine beings are already incorporated into the book and that, consequently, the â€Å"myth† in these literary piece may have something to do with religion. True enough, the various sections found within the book have a common subject— the power of a divine entity and how such power determines the fate of men. Most of the transformations that happen in the stories are of people being â€Å"punished† for â€Å"the sins† they have committed (Ovid, p.171). This punishment of sins can be taken to mean as one way of reflecting justice in the sense that the action of man is essentially incorporated with a corresponding responsibility and that God—or religion—has a corresponding role in the provision of these sanctions. By focusing on the relationship between the individuals and God in the Metamorphoses, one can immediately draw the idea that religion is the binding force between the two, bridging the invisible—and perhaps inconceivable—distance that separates the mortal from the immortal. Metamorphoses shows great belief in the power of God such as the instance of ‘creation’ where â€Å"the king of the gods divided the year into four new seasons† (Ovid, p. 10) and the belief that every person committing a sin should undergo a punishment such as â€Å"impiety and its awful punishment† (Ovid, p. 293). All his stories tell us widely of the power and influence that God and religion has on people. Dante Alighieri’s Inferno begins on Good Friday and ends on Easter day showing the awareness of the author on these two crucial Christian doctrines that focus on God. Dante tries to create a creative connection between a person’s sins on Earth and the sentence the man or woman gets in Hell such as the case when people are â€Å"condemned for gullet sins† (Alighieri, p. 51) and â€Å"for carnal sin† (Alighieri, p. 41). The angry people are made to stifle on mud, the enraged people assault each other, the greedy people are forcefully made to eat human excreta etc. All these inspirations grant the majority of Inferno’s moments of stunning descriptions and representational power, and also provide to shed light on the primary theme of Dante—the flawlessness of God’s fairness. Readers might feel that the torments that Dante underwent were very harsh, yet the author justifies the fact that sinners are punished according to the severity of their sins. According to Dante, God’s justice appears as strictly purposeful, unthinking, and remote, and that â€Å"divine justice searches the moral character of all created beings† (Alighieri, p. 324). There appears to be no mitigating situations in Hell, and punishment is a must for every sinner. People who show sympathy to the people suffering have a lack of thoughtfulness. Taking into account his Inferno, Dante appears to be a strict follower of Christian principles, or at least a literary author who employs the Christian conception of Hell in order to amplify the main contentions behind Inferno (Sanders, p. 112). As Dante feels that fraud is a greater evil compared to violence, the main intention of the author is not to think about evil but to teach and support the importance of Christian principles. It can also be observed that Dante’s intention in writing Inferno is to show a brief picture of the terrible political activities in the fourteenth-century of Florence. This has a major role in the religious conception of Inferno because, through the literary work, Dante stresses his personal view that Church and the State are not different but identical authorities on Earth. This reflects the idea that religion should take an authoritative role in the context of the larger society. Dante also gives many references to the Greek and Roman community. According to Dante, religion and faith takes the topmost place in a person’s life and religion has its impact on any person who has faith in God and believes in Hell and being punished for the evils and sins he has committed. Dante illustrates this point by stating the instance where â€Å"Saint Paul, the chosen Vessel, came to carry back a strengthening of that faith from which salvation always must begin† (Alighieri, p. 13). On the other hand, The Aeneid tells the story of how something great got started, how Aeneas had to let go Troy to form a new Rome. One of the most unforgettable incidents is when Aeneas weeps on leaving Carthage. Virgil shows how the messenger of the gods indirectly asks Aeneas to leave Troy (Virgil, p. 140). It is perhaps a manifestation of divine intervention, as most people call it, which leads one into the realization that a Divine entity manifested through religion has a lot to do with the affairs of human beings. Since the course and purpose of Aeneas’s path are destined and that the pain and fame he had to face in combat as the story continues cannot change his fate, God would have certainly have had a huge role in changing Aenas fate. It tells us that The Aeneid is inclined to relating how a Divine authority has the power to greatly alter the lives of men. In essence, The Aeneid shows consideration for the belief in gods in the exploits of ancient kingdoms, such as the passage â€Å"the King of the Gods has sorted out your fate, so rolls your life, as the world rolls through its changes† (Virgil, p. 116) The Trojans moving from Troy to Italy are shown in the first part of Aeneid. Dido the Queen wishes Aeneas, but destiny rejects her, and the desire for Aeneas makes her commit suicide. Virgil wrote the Aeneid in a period of the Golden age of Roman Empire when Caesar Augustus was the emperor. Virgil compares the biased and communal circumstances of his period with the hereditary custom of the idols and Greek gods, to show that the political rule under Augustus was traditionally resulting from the gods. Since The Aeneid is filled with foresight and mystical calculations, with dreams, strange visits from people who are dead, puzzling omens, and messengers from God, it can hardly be denied that the story itself is filled with religious precepts that correspond to contemporary society. The weather is used as a power to express God’s will. The storm at the start represents the fury when Juno sends it. The Goddess Venus protects the Trojans by calling the God Neptune. All these instances show faithfulness in the context of the literary piece inasmuch as it reveals the significance of a deep faith and belief in God and religion. Meanwhile, Homer’s Odyssey is the story of a man with many complications surrounding him. In this literary piece, the power of God and faith in religion is shown when Greek gods come in various forms to relate with humans. The story also reveals that the gods show compassion to mortals such as the instance when Athena said that her â€Å"heart breaks for Odysseus, that seasoned veteran cursed by fate so long† (Homer, p. 79). It tells us that, although gods have superior power above all mortals, they nevertheless have (or at least some of them do have) a sense of pity and remorse for the wretched conditions of humanity. It gives us the impression that gods do have a definitive role in the lives of mortals at least in the context of Odyssey. All these literatures have one thing in common—religion or religions have implied meanings and consequences to the life of the characters. The characters in the literary works are widely influenced by their corresponding Divine Beings and their religion and that the differing status between the struggling individual and the powerful Divine Beings shows how one is subordinated before the other. How to cite Portrayal Of Religion In Literature, Papers

Portrayal Of Religion In Literature Free Essays

Religion plays an important role in every man’s life. Its impact is manifested on every person daily affairs and his or her behavior. Hundreds of literatures that explicitly tackle religion have already been written. We will write a custom essay sample on Portrayal Of Religion In Literature or any similar topic only for you Order Now While the list may be inexhaustible, the Metamorphoses, Aeneid, Inferno and Odyssey serve as some of the popular literary works where a religious strand can be looked into. The fact that the Metamorphoses by Ovid composed of mythological stories printed in the form of poetry gives one the first impression that divine beings are already incorporated into the book and that, consequently, the â€Å"myth† in these literary piece may have something to do with religion. True enough, the various sections found within the book have a common subject— the power of a divine entity and how such power determines the fate of men. Most of the transformations that happen in the stories are of people being â€Å"punished† for â€Å"the sins† they have committed (Ovid, p.171). This punishment of sins can be taken to mean as one way of reflecting justice in the sense that the action of man is essentially incorporated with a corresponding responsibility and that God—or religion—has a corresponding role in the provision of these sanctions. By focusing on the relationship between the individuals and God in the Metamorphoses, one can immediately draw the idea that religion is the binding force between the two, bridging the invisible—and perhaps inconceivable—distance that separates the mortal from the immortal. Metamorphoses shows great belief in the power of God such as the instance of ‘creation’ where â€Å"the king of the gods divided the year into four new seasons† (Ovid, p. 10) and the belief that every person committing a sin should undergo a punishment such as â€Å"impiety and its awful punishment† (Ovid, p. 293). All his stories tell us widely of the power and influence that God and religion has on people. Dante Alighieri’s Inferno begins on Good Friday and ends on Easter day showing the awareness of the author on these two crucial Christian doctrines that focus on God. Dante tries to create a creative connection between a person’s sins on Earth and the sentence the man or woman gets in Hell such as the case when people are â€Å"condemned for gullet sins† (Alighieri, p. 51) and â€Å"for carnal sin† (Alighieri, p. 41). The angry people are made to stifle on mud, the enraged people assault each other, the greedy people are forcefully made to eat human excreta etc. All these inspirations grant the majority of Inferno’s moments of stunning descriptions and representational power, and also provide to shed light on the primary theme of Dante—the flawlessness of God’s fairness. Readers might feel that the torments that Dante underwent were very harsh, yet the author justifies the fact that sinners are punished according to the severity of their sins. According to Dante, God’s justice appears as strictly purposeful, unthinking, and remote, and that â€Å"divine justice searches the moral character of all created beings† (Alighieri, p. 324). There appears to be no mitigating situations in Hell, and punishment is a must for every sinner. People who show sympathy to the people suffering have a lack of thoughtfulness. Taking into account his Inferno, Dante appears to be a strict follower of Christian principles, or at least a literary author who employs the Christian conception of Hell in order to amplify the main contentions behind Inferno (Sanders, p. 112). As Dante feels that fraud is a greater evil compared to violence, the main intention of the author is not to think about evil but to teach and support the importance of Christian principles. It can also be observed that Dante’s intention in writing Inferno is to show a brief picture of the terrible political activities in the fourteenth-century of Florence. This has a major role in the religious conception of Inferno because, through the literary work, Dante stresses his personal view that Church and the State are not different but identical authorities on Earth. This reflects the idea that religion should take an authoritative role in the context of the larger society. Dante also gives many references to the Greek and Roman community. According to Dante, religion and faith takes the topmost place in a person’s life and religion has its impact on any person who has faith in God and believes in Hell and being punished for the evils and sins he has committed. Dante illustrates this point by stating the instance where â€Å"Saint Paul, the chosen Vessel, came to carry back a strengthening of that faith from which salvation always must begin† (Alighieri, p. 13). On the other hand, The Aeneid tells the story of how something great got started, how Aeneas had to let go Troy to form a new Rome. One of the most unforgettable incidents is when Aeneas weeps on leaving Carthage. Virgil shows how the messenger of the gods indirectly asks Aeneas to leave Troy (Virgil, p. 140). It is perhaps a manifestation of divine intervention, as most people call it, which leads one into the realization that a Divine entity manifested through religion has a lot to do with the affairs of human beings. Since the course and purpose of Aeneas’s path are destined and that the pain and fame he had to face in combat as the story continues cannot change his fate, God would have certainly have had a huge role in changing Aenas fate. It tells us that The Aeneid is inclined to relating how a Divine authority has the power to greatly alter the lives of men. In essence, The Aeneid shows consideration for the belief in gods in the exploits of ancient kingdoms, such as the passage â€Å"the King of the Gods has sorted out your fate, so rolls your life, as the world rolls through its changes† (Virgil, p. 116) The Trojans moving from Troy to Italy are shown in the first part of Aeneid. Dido the Queen wishes Aeneas, but destiny rejects her, and the desire for Aeneas makes her commit suicide. Virgil wrote the Aeneid in a period of the Golden age of Roman Empire when Caesar Augustus was the emperor. Virgil compares the biased and communal circumstances of his period with the hereditary custom of the idols and Greek gods, to show that the political rule under Augustus was traditionally resulting from the gods. Since The Aeneid is filled with foresight and mystical calculations, with dreams, strange visits from people who are dead, puzzling omens, and messengers from God, it can hardly be denied that the story itself is filled with religious precepts that correspond to contemporary society. The weather is used as a power to express God’s will. The storm at the start represents the fury when Juno sends it. The Goddess Venus protects the Trojans by calling the God Neptune. All these instances show faithfulness in the context of the literary piece inasmuch as it reveals the significance of a deep faith and belief in God and religion. Meanwhile, Homer’s Odyssey is the story of a man with many complications surrounding him. In this literary piece, the power of God and faith in religion is shown when Greek gods come in various forms to relate with humans. The story also reveals that the gods show compassion to mortals such as the instance when Athena said that her â€Å"heart breaks for Odysseus, that seasoned veteran cursed by fate so long† (Homer, p. 79). It tells us that, although gods have superior power above all mortals, they nevertheless have (or at least some of them do have) a sense of pity and remorse for the wretched conditions of humanity. It gives us the impression that gods do have a definitive role in the lives of mortals at least in the context of Odyssey. All these literatures have one thing in common—religion or religions have implied meanings and consequences to the life of the characters. The characters in the literary works are widely influenced by their corresponding Divine Beings and their religion and that the differing status between the struggling individual and the powerful Divine Beings shows how one is subordinated before the other. How to cite Portrayal Of Religion In Literature, Papers