Transcendentalism In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

The udder disdain dripping from a review of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter released by Donald’s Works in Progress is easily tangible within the introductory paragraph. The author successfully marginalizes the literary greatness achieved by the novel in the eyes of past critics by essentially writing off the book as a stereotype of tragic literature. The Scarlet Letter is written as a story redemption of a puritan adulteress by the name of Hester Prynne, and is not meant to be consumed by thrill seeking readers, whom of which want exciting plot twists and surprise endings, due to the predictable nature of classic tragedies. The critic further insults the very fabric of the story by suggesting that the author never allows for a complete representation …show more content…
Transcendentalism is the belief that every believer has a the voice of God in their heads and since he’s in your mind you are able to create a strong, personal relationship with him, this also leads them to believe that anything coming from a follower is God’s will. In the critique Donald says “There exists a disease amongst much of the literary community, and much of the philosophical/theological one, that the “human condition” means suffering”. What the critic doesn’t understand is that the transcendentalist community respects every idea that comes from the human mind because in general they believe that every thought has been created with God and that it’s just a part of the literary customs of the time period, although the ideas may be dark at times it is still a huge component of transcendentalism. Donald needed to develop a better understanding of literary techniques of the time period before critiquing The Scarlet Letter, because most of his complaints are all concerning writing styles which were the most influential in their respective time periods, thus proving that the critics of the novel had no prior knowledge of the books history and just wrote the review without any