Similarities Between The Scarlet Letter And What I Lived For

The standards within society are the reason the individual struggles living a life that is truthful. This is an idea that reoccurs in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and in Henry David Thoreau’s “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”. The Scarlet Letter presents the idea through a story of two individuals unsatisfied with their lives because they are restricted from each other due to the beliefs in their Puritan Society. Meanwhile, Thoreau explores his own perception of life and finds he is distracted from living a truthful life because the social norms instilled on everyone are leading elsewhere. Instead of being told outwardly, both authors create the idea through their use of rhetorical devices within their works; Hawthorne using …show more content…
To show the great division that society can cause between an individual and his true life, Thoreau embeds similes into his writing. He emphasizes how much of individual’s lives are consumed by focusing on others. Instead of focusing on the growth on one’s self, “like pigmies we fight with cranes”(118). This references the pygmy people who often fight with cranes who migrate to their land in the winter. Although inhabitants of the same place, they focus on their differences and how they inconvenience each other rather than find ways to live together peacefully. As is the social climate in the world today, differences are targeted because somewhere along the line, it socially became accepted that differences must separate everyone. Thoreau also points out that society has corrupt humans. The priority of living purely and as simply as possible is blurred by desire for gaining power. He says that “life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating” (119). A boundary forever fluctuating shows the push and pull between humans alike. Additionally, a boundary on its own is a way to keep other out, therefore raise one’s self. It is these such things that distract from living life in its purest form. Going along with this idea, Thoreau adds the pleasure that life could bring if all superficial things could be forgotten. If this were so and “men steadily observed realities only, …life…would be like a fairy tale” (123). However, once again, society has prevented satisfaction with life by implying that there is greater satisfaction in acquiring wealth. Similes show that life can be compared to many things because people have changed the meaning of living so much that it is no longer