Nantucket, Massachusetts

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the symbolic meaning of the “A” worn by Hester Prynne is central throughout the novel. However, the meaning of the “A” shifts in the novel due to society’s view of Hester. For many years after the Massachusetts magistracy forces Hester to wear the “A,” the letter maintains its original meaning: adultery. This accusation originates from Hester’s affair with Arthur Dimmesdale while she is married to Roger Chillingworth, resulting in her pregnancy.…

A fundamental and timeless part of literature from the Salem Witch Trials to the Red Scare to present day Disney movies, evil antagonists provide a source of conflict for a story. Author, Arthur Miller instills villain qualities in one of his main characters, Abigail. The Crucible, a story written about the Salem Witch Trials, demonstrated the power of those who strived for it compared to the outcasts living in Salem during those times. In charge of accusing men and woman of appearing with…

Transcendentalism was first practiced by the likes of Henry David Thoreau in the mid eighteenth century. Displeased with society, Thoreau moved into a one room shack, isolated in the woods, where he wrote Walden. Transcendental ideas have been preserved throughout time by people like Chris McCandless. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, details McCandless’s journey all over the nation after graduating at Emory University. All in all, transcendental ideas have proven to be very relevant today. Not…

The question of whether or not cannibalism occurred in the Jamestown settlement in the 1600’s had been debated by historians for generations. Recently, scholars have turned their attention towards a different question with regards to the cannibalism rumors; the more modern line of inquiry about Jamestown, exemplified in Rachel Herrman’s The “tragicall historie”: Cannibalism and Abundance in Colonial Jamestown, is focused on the reasoning behind why multiple accounts of the events were published,…

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832, to Abby May and Amos Bronson Alcott (Price). In a letter to her father twenty-five years later, Alcott described herself as being born “bawling at the disagreeable world” (Kort). Louisa May Alcott’s father was a philosopher and educator, a leader in transcendentalism, and a spokesman for the abolitionist movement (Heginbotham). Fascinated by child development, he observed his own children in various stages, including,…

A close reading on Sidney Sheldon’s “The Sands of Time” The book of Sidney Sheldon entitled Sands of time is about the lives of 4 nuns from a convent in Spain. At the beginning, a few of the dictator of Spain’s followers were burning the church as well as the convent where the 4 nuns were residing in. The men had killed the priests, raped the nuns as well as steal anything valuable within the house of God. The story revolves around the lives of the 4 nuns who managed to escape just in time. It…

physical geography of Massachusetts and support within the state to ratify the Constitution is that in Massachusetts the delegates supported the the ratification of the constitution. The map shows that there is a evenly division of states where somes states support ratification others oppose. The Proclamation Line of 1763 separated the states which forbade all settlement past the line along the Appalachian Mountains. Also, the Province of Massachusetts Bay was formed in 1691. Massachusetts is…

Mass hysteria has been occurring since the 1600's. Even today in the twenty-first century there has been mass hysteria such as, 2012 when the world was going to end, and there were many reasons and resolutions to 2012 hysteria. In 2012, a mass hysteria surged through the public in the United States. The entire public panicked thinking the world was going to end. A smiliar public hysteria occurred during the 1600's when the town of Salem believed that Lucifer walked with them and that…

vWilliam Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was born in 1644 in London to Admiral Sir WIlliam Penn and Margaret Jasper Vanderschuren. He received his education at Chigwell School in Essex, England and attended Christ Church College but was expelled for criticizing the Church of England. He then studied theology at the Protestant Academy in France and returned to England to study law. Penn was inspired to become a Quaker when he traveled to Ireland to manage his father’s property and…

On March 5, 1770 a mob of colonists armed with clubs surrounded the customs house in Boston where the kings money was kept. The mob surrounded the guard posted there and threatened his life so the red coats were called in, to disperse the mob and the defend the customs house. The colonists started to attack the redcoats tasked with defending the customs house, Which lead to an unordered shot fired by one of the soldiers, not directly at the colonists. According to the Captain Thomas Preston the…