Al Capone's The Scarlet Letter Scandal

The Scarlet Letter Scandal
Scandals are seen in everyday life and throughout history. Scandal is something that brings about shame or disgrace to a community or individual. People document many scandals, and put them in newspapers, on television, the radio, and they even wrote books about it for others to enjoy. In today’s media we see celebrities “shunned” all the time whether it’s something as small as a bad wardrobe or bad habits they have to their crimes like one of the most notorious American gangsters known as Al Capone. As the scandals and shunning today are different today the media still does stories and writes articles of the person and tells the whole world of what they did and disgraces the person and shows them as a lesser individual.
Johnny Torrio went to Chicago to resolve family issues which led to killing of a few gang members of The Black Hand. In Chicago Torrio saw opportunities for bootlegging during the prohibition. After nearly dying in an assassination attempt in 1925 Torrio gave his business to Capone. Capone was notorious during the Prohibition Era for his crime syndicate, known as the “Capones,” dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor and other illegal activities in Chicago from the early 1920s to 1931. He controlled large portions of the Chicago underworld, which provided the Outfit with an estimated US $100 million per year. When he was sentenced to federal prison he was sentenced for tax evasion because they did not have enough proof on his bootlegging and felt tax evasion was an easier way to put him away. His business card reportedly described him as a used-furniture dealer. Although Capone both ordered and committed murders himself he was shown upon in the media as a terrible person and received terrible media attention for his crimes and disgraced his reputation as a good
Hester is forced to wear the letter “A” and receives a bad reputation all around the town and is seen as a sinner. In ways Al Capone and Hester Prynne had the same shunning. Al Capone was only seen for his wrong doings and known to the world as a gangster and a thug. Hester Prynne was seen as a sinner and made to look that way by the town. Capone and Hester were made off to be bad people, even though Capone helped out the homeless and opened up soup kitchens he was never shown as a good person only bad. By wearing the “A” Hester taught of sin being a wrong doing and showed that if you sin you will be caught but she wasn’t known as a sort of preacher she was known as a sinner accused of adultery. They both were disgraced but Hester was never put to jail for years because of her crime she just lived in shame and humiliation by the town’s people. Capone was not forced to wear a letter for murder or bootlegging but in ways his image was disgraced and seen as a bad person. In the end they were both lost, one at sea and one to pneumonia, and might never be seen for the good they could have