The development of America as we know it today has come to be due to many series of distinct time periods and people. The famous novel The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a dramatized representation of the unique aspects of one specific time period and group of people, the Boston Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans in the 17th century. As his ancestors lived amongst these colonists, Hawthorne portrays their lives with criticism and irony. He provides a look into the ways in which their claimed beliefs failed to influence their society and actions. In the year 1630, a group of English Puritans set sail from London to Massachusetts. This was a journey of freedom, hope, and escape, for the governmental changes occurring in their homeland
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Shortly before the group of Puritans departed on their journey to the new world, Winthrop delivered a sermon that set the tone for the new colony and expressed the core beliefs of the Puritans. His vision was for the new colony to be “A Model of Christian Charity,” the title of his commentary (Holland 5). In his sermon, he speaks of following the concept of Matthew 11, which says to love one’s neighbor as oneself, and states that, “this sensibleness and sympathy of each others conditions will necessarily infuse into each part a native desire and endeavor to strengthen, defend, pre- serve and comfort each other” (Holland 5). Ultimately, the colony was to be the infamous “City upon a Hill,” the ultimate example to all of Christianity and humanity. However, it was no secret that the Puritan colony had developed into a society of hypocrisy towards their Christian ways. The leader of a neighboring colony even stated that there was “religious and political sedition in the Massachusetts Bay colony”(Duinen 193). Hawthorne ultimately uses The Scarlet Letter to expose the ways in which this claim was true, that the Puritan society was stricken with the failure to be the community of sympathy and unity as well as the ultimate example of Christianity. In only the second paragraph of the novel, Hawthorne reveals that “…the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and
Shortly before the group of Puritans departed on their journey to the new world, Winthrop delivered a sermon that set the tone for the new colony and expressed the core beliefs of the Puritans. His vision was for the new colony to be “A Model of Christian Charity,” the title of his commentary (Holland 5). In his sermon, he speaks of following the concept of Matthew 11, which says to love one’s neighbor as oneself, and states that, “this sensibleness and sympathy of each others conditions will necessarily infuse into each part a native desire and endeavor to strengthen, defend, pre- serve and comfort each other” (Holland 5). Ultimately, the colony was to be the infamous “City upon a Hill,” the ultimate example to all of Christianity and humanity. However, it was no secret that the Puritan colony had developed into a society of hypocrisy towards their Christian ways. The leader of a neighboring colony even stated that there was “religious and political sedition in the Massachusetts Bay colony”(Duinen 193). Hawthorne ultimately uses The Scarlet Letter to expose the ways in which this claim was true, that the Puritan society was stricken with the failure to be the community of sympathy and unity as well as the ultimate example of Christianity. In only the second paragraph of the novel, Hawthorne reveals that “…the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and