Badge engineering

During the 1600's there was a type of punishment in Puritan society where someone would have to wear a scarlet letter on their shirt. This was for the reason of public humiliation so people would be discouraged to do anything bad. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne the main character Hester Prynne is being punished for a crime she committed and the punishment was public humiliation so she was forced to wear a scarlet letter. She was being discriminated and left out of society. In this…

The Scarlet Letter, written in 1850, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, functions as a critique of organized religion. Karl Marx states "the question of God’s existence is not the fundamental issue for Marxist analysis; rather, what human beings do in God’s name organized religion is the focus" (Tyson 76). Also, in the text, religion functioned to keep characters from resisting socioeconomic oppression along with other types. In chapter 1, The Scarlet Letter functions as a critique of organized religion,…

The Letter “A” At the start of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, the “A” acted as a symbol for Hester’s sin of adultery. In fact, her Puritan community punished her by forcing her to don a scarlet letter “A” upon her chest. Wearing this letter labelled her as a fallen woman. This caused her to stand out in such a way that numerous community members looked down at her and judged her for her sin. However, as time elapsed, the community gradually saw Hester for her contributions to…

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is resembled as the rosebush. The rosebush is shown to represent hope for the prisoners to have hope to leave a place of sins, the rosebush also resembles Hester’s life in which flowers sometimes blossom and fall apart at times. Hester Prynne was invented by Nathaniel Hawthorne who created Prynne to be a woman who commits adultery and gets punished. Prynne is taken to prison in which Hawthorne explains it as a sad, dark, and depressing…

As Hester Prynne prepares to walk upon the scaffold for the townspeople to publicly shame her for committing adultery in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the narrator introduces not only the characteristics of Puritan society, but also how Puritan beliefs and ideologies affect Hester’s punishment and reputation within the community. Many townspeople believe that Hester’s punishment is not enough, one woman even going as far as to suggest that Hester “...has brought shame upon us all,…

The Scarlet Letter itself has a myriad of meanings, but all meanings are centered on Hester Prynne. When discussing the complex meaning of the literal scarlet letter, one must first consider Hester Prynne. When Hester debuts her embroidered letter it is said that Hester and the letter are forever bound. Hester is forced to display the red “A” on her bosom, and her humanity is stripped away by the Puritan community to become a symbol. The “crimson velvet” (pg. 57) letter evolves throughout the…

Scarlet Letter Final Essay Assignment There were many different themes expressed in The Scarlet letter, but the theme that kept recurring was sin.All of the main characters in this book are sinners, and a sin is the act of doing wrong. Both Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale's sin was Adultery. Roger Chillingworth's sin was seeking revenge on Dimmesdale after he had an affair with his wife. In the beginning of The Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne is married to Roger Chillingworth. Chillingworth…

Hester has committed a crime that is punishable by death her punishments so far have been jail, the letter "A" on her breast, and possibly her child pearl (the product of her crime) being taken away. Some people might agree or disagree that these punishments are enough or not. Hester's punishment is enough because she feels bad about the crime she has committed, everyone is paying attention to her and pointing fingers. She is also at risk of losing her child. First, Hester's punishment is…

In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the letter “A” as a powerful symbol to identify the central character, Hester Prynne. It is also the title of the novel. Hester is obligated to wear the letter as a symbol of her adulterous affair with Dimmesdale, a minister of the church. They both reside in the puritan community and are compelled to practice the Puritan moral code which torments them daily. Hester walks out of the prison door carrying baby Pearl towards the scaffold…

A woman is fired from her job because of an offensive phrase she said online. A man is receiving threats of rape and murder because he posted an inappropriate picture on Facebook. A teenager is being bullied and called names because of a comment she posted on her friend’s Twitter. Hence, public shaming has been around since the 1620s, where people started with bringing shame on to those who committed a sin. This practice is demonstrated through The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this…