Nathaniel Ayers

The novel, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne tells of an adulteress named Hester Prynne in the New England Puritan society. This adulteress gives birth to a daughter, Pearl Prynne, while accompanied by her partner in adultery, Reverend Dimmesdale, and her lost husband Roger Chillingworth in this highly offensive and judgmental society. Each of these main characters changes through each of the scaffold scenes which signifies a place of hiding and releasing secrets and confessions…

With the usage of rhetoric, one can write or say one statement while implying a completely separate opinion rather easily. This theory is prevalent among the great authors of our time, but none so much as Nathaniel Hawthorne. For example, throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne’s varying usage of enticing imagery and marvelous diction reflect how the Puritans feel about Hester, as a result implying how his opinions of the group. Within the novel, Hawthorne shows the…

“A mockery at which angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced, with jeering laughter” (Hawthorne 101). The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the article “Concerns Raised on ‘Scarlet Letter’ for Drunk Drivers,” by Toni Locy, both provided very different examples of public shaming. Both show the pros and cons of shaming by either telling a story or explaining people’s opinions. The Scarlet Letter provides a historic view on shaming during the Puritan times. A woman named Hester is…

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter is set in a time when colonists were trying to create a better society than they were previously used to. Early Puritan towns set out to do just that; create a utopian society where puritan morals were followed very strictly. Hawthorne’s anti-transcendentalist views give a clear focus on the communities’ strict views that show no regard for the individuals in society, but only for the conformity needed to repress any sinful lures that may tarnish the…

Today, ambiguity can be seen in many pieces of well-known literature, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Ambiguous statements and phrases are meant to leave imagination to the reader. To use ambiguity in literature is not meant to confuse, but rather it is for the reader to visualize what he or she believes it to be. To use clarity in literature, on the other hand, does not necessarily leave a less important message but a less deep…

“The world 's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before.” Here, Nathaniel Hawthorne distinctly features the tone of his story: a sympathy and encouragement for women who must deal with society’s restrictions. Within The Scarlet Letter, which focuses on Hester Prynne, a woman ostracized from society for adultery, Hawthorne depicts 17th century Boston and the way women were…

Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville are all authors of the 19th Century that demonstrate their interest about man’s quest for knowledge. Each of these authors has written and exposed man’s quest for knowledge through their darkest desires. Proving that searching for knowledge can lead one to their own downfall or failure in their quest. They believed that human actions could be self-destructive. As a result of this, they have conceived the world that is of their own device…

of witchcraft. These first accusations sparked a several month hysteria over witchcraft in the village, resulting in the accusation of over one hundred and fifty men, women, and children of devil worship. The events in Salem were inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story Young Goodman Brown, published almost two hundred years later. The short story follows the journey of Young Goodman Brown as he embarks on a night of devil worship before he settles into the Puritan lifestyle that his…

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne gives readers a taste of what life was like in a society controlled by Puritans. It is a miserable life, as Hawthorne shows readers through the degradation of Hester Prynne, the adulterous protagonist, who has to bear being isolated from society. In the sidelines, there is Reverend Dimmesdale, who is tortured internally by his secret “sin” of having an affair with Prynne. And while all of this is going on, Roger Chillingworth, Prynne’s revenge-ridden…

"On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A" ( Hawthorne 45). In the book, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is a woman convicted of adultery and who must wear the letter A upon her chest for her sin. The reader may assume that Hester is a coward who refuses to show her face in town after this incident but instead, Hester is a strong leader because of her ability to be honest about her sin…