John Winthrop

Abraham Lincoln once defined a hypocrite as: “the man who murdered both his parents… pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.” There has been no shortage of hypocrisy throughout history; and all the same for literature. The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is rich with characters harboring this undesirable trait. Characters such as Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale are motivated to act hypocritically by vengeance, fear, penitence, and even hypocrisy itself.…

Felipe Mendoza Ms.Isibue English 11 AP 5 August 2017 Scarlet Letter Written in the Eighteen- fifties, The Scarlet Letter has been a controversial book for over a century. The novel revolves around the main female protagonist, Hester Prynne, who was caught and punished for committing adultery with an unknown partner. As a result of her actions Prynne has a child named pearl, who later on in the novel becomes the richest women in the new world. Since gender roles were beginning to switch towards…

Pearl and how she relates to sin in The Scarlet Letter In The Scarlet Letter, a novel set in the seventeenth century in a Puritan settlement by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pearl is a symbol that contributes to the role of sin throughout the entirety of the story. She is more of a symbol that is meant to supplement one of the main themes in the story, sin, rather than an actual character that has unique characteristics. She represents several things like a constant reminder of Hester’s sin, an…

Mankind has taken it upon itself to be the judge in all aspects of morality and truth, for from the very beginning, we have been known to punish those who went against what we believed to be right. A significant example of our hypervigilance is the scaffold, a common shaming practice that belonged to America’s Puritanical forefathers. The scaffold’s purpose was made infamous in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and decades past its role in the novel, the significance and symbolism of the…

In John Demos’ book A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony, the author breaks down the long standing conceptions of life in Plymouth Colony that it was a place filled with religious fanaticism and strict social order. As Demos argues, this was not entirely the case. Through his interpretations of surviving colonial records, Demos shows that the colonists were faced with common issues such as: adultery, divorce, murder and even domestic abuse. They also exhibited acts of…

Many authors use symbolism to portray themes throughout a novel. This occurred in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book, The Scarlet Letter. The book took place during the Puritan time period which lasted from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. The Scarlet Letter is about the main character, Hester Prynne, who commited the crime of adultery. She was publicly shame punished by the community for the felony which she was involved in. The symbols used in this novel were crucial in reinforcing the central…

The Psychology of Emotions in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter The Scarlett Letter is set during the seventeenth century in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The story deals with a lone mother, Hester Prynne, trying to deal with the onslaught of criticism coming from the town about her sin of adultery. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter, the psychology of emotions within the characters alters their actions. The anger within the townspeople of Boston against European royalty is…

Speech #1 Edward R. Murrow, a CBS reporter and war correspondent delivered a report from Buchenwald, Germany on April 16, 1945. He delivered this dialect upon seeing the atrocities committed by the Germans towards the Jews. He addresses the American people, describing the scene he had witnessed at this labor camp, which he found the scene to be so unbelievable that he is rendered speechless many times through out his speech. Murrow’s outrage is so apparent through-out his account, that it is…

Moreover, another characteristic of romanticism that connects to the three stories “The Scarlet Letter”, “The Minister’s Black Veil”, and “The Devil and Tom Walker” is individualism. Individualism is shown throughout these stories in different ways. In the story “The Scarlet Letter”, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows individuality in Hester. He showed Hester’s individualism by making her the only one to wear the scarlet letter “A” and also making her different from everyone else. Even though the letter…

Symbolism has been in human history since the very beginning, especially in books and poems. It is a way to teach and reach a better understanding of our world or an idea. Nathaniel Hawthorne provides many examples of symbolism in his novel, The Scarlet Letter. Every character provides a different idea, but they are all related and share the topic of sin. You might ask what the scarlet letter, the central symbol of the book, could mean. The Scarlet Letter was a symbol that right after you see it…