Preview

Scarlet Letter Composition Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
674 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Scarlet Letter Composition Essay
Scarlet Letter Composition

The Puritans’ beliefs in the 17th century were different than most of the citizens that live in this modern day society. The Puritan beliefs are based on the of the Church of England, but they purified the religion. The Scarlet Letter is based off the Puritans’ beliefs and the story of society that the Puritans lived in; some other critics observe that Nathaniel Hawthorne criticizes the Puritans society and their beliefs. When The Scarlet Letter was written the Author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, discovered many ideas and facts about the Puritan community. Knowing this Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about how women in the 17th century lived and how strict the society's rules can be, one major rule that was followed strictly phonate was “Actions spoke louder than words, so actions had to be constantly controlled.” (nd.edu). When the book begins it starts with introducing Hester and how she has done this huge violation according to the bible, maybe even causing the death penalty upon herself. As The Scarlet Letter goes through the timeline of how she is isolated and is shunned from the society; eventually, Hester slowly becomes part of the society by being the pure character she really was. This lets her take off the scarlet “A” and change the meaning of Adultery to the meaning of Able. Hawthorne decribes the climax of Hester’s story by expressing, “The letter was the symbol of her calling. such helpfulness
…show more content…
The Puritans were very religious people who were described as very pure citizens; in addition, the Puritans believed what was said in the bible was the right way. The Puritan community was represented by Hawthorne using the beliefs and how the community worked, but leaving room for criticism from many people, some saying that his goal of the book was to criticize the Puritans’

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Scarlet Letter is a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This essay discusses how Hester is a victim of her social pressure. She was punished for something she did to achieve her dream of having someone that loves her. Hester committed adultery with minister Dimmesdale and had a child with him, Pearl. Her punishment was to stand on the scaffold with her child and wear the letter A on her breast as a sign of her “crime”. Due to the strictures of the puritan society, Hester Prynne suffers from public shaming. She almost lost her only child, and was not able to openly love who she wanted.…

    • 812 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Puritans’ were a 16th and 17th centery form of the English Protastant. When comeing to Massachetes, the Purtains made a law stateing that if one did not keep holy the Sabbath they could and would be punishished by the General Court (Vowell 102). They took the bible very seriously. As difernt well know Purtains speak throught the novel they talk in a biblish form. For example “Cotton says, ‘If God be the gardener, who shall pluck up what he sets down?’” (Vowell 3). Almost as if it was coming straight out of the bibleitself. Mr. Underhill even ask himself “Should not Christians have more mercy and comapsion?” while Ms. Vowell answers “ Nope. The bible offers reason enough” (Vowell 194).…

    • 402 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    After Hester committed adultery and was forced to wear the scarlet letter, she could no longer go to church without the pastor speaking about adultery and using her as an example. The novel reads, “If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse” (Hawthorne 95). Even when Hester walked the streets and was simply trying to live a normal life, she often ended up getting called out for the transgression she committed against her husband. She was now seen as an example of woman’s frailty and weakness. The poem also similarly shows that women are seen as weak in relationships and sin. In the poem it says, “...how, after leading them astray, can you wish them without strain?” (Cruz 296). This shows that men, and even women themselves, saw women as weak and unable to live life without a male figure in their lives. Then, if they are led astray they are severely shunned and punished. Both the poem and novel show that in the 1600’s women were seen as the weakness and more as sinners than…

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne establishes the character Pearl as having tenacity and peculiarity in her personality and traits. First, Nathaniel Hawthorne exaggerates Pearl’s qualities to establish her as an odd child and a separate person from the Puritan town she lives in. In chapter 7, after the governor asks Pearl who created her, she answers by saying ‘no one created her rather her mother plucked her from a wild rose bush near the prison.’ Hawthorne follows Pearl’s remark with, “This fantasy was probably suggest by the near proximity of the Governor’s red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window; together with her recollection of the prison rose bush, which she had passed in coming hither.” (Pg. 77) Adults are not…

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Scarlet Letter is the book Nathaniel Hawthorne is perhaps most famous for. Set in Puritan New England, it is a story of the love between a preacher (Arthur Dimmesdale) and a young woman (Hester Prynne) whose husband is presumed dead. When their encounter produces a child, Hester is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” (representing “Adultery”) upon her bosom for the rest of her life, as she refuses to give the identity of the child’s father. She then becomes somewhat of a hermit, trying her hardest to avoid human contact. Hawthorne was known to feel guilty about the intolerance of his Puritan ancestors. After all, one of them was a judge at the infamous Salem Witch trials. His mother became withdrawn from the world after the death of his father, and Hawthorn also withdrew himself from society after graduating college. This family history of isolation might have been Hawthorne’s inspiration for the isolation of Hester Prynne in his novel. When Hester’s “dead” husband pops up onto the scene, he is obviously furious at Hester for her infidelity and vows to extract revenge on her baby’s father. This eventually leads to Dimmesdale’s death and the end of the novel. The Scarlet Letter is obviously a fictitious account of the doomed love between Hester and Arthur, but is it perhaps realistic fiction? Did Hawthorne stray from a realistic representation of Puritan lifestyle, or is his book an accurate account of the “Puritan Way?”…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Puritans, a very religious group of people, thrived in the northern British colonies in the 17th century. Religion governed the way these people lived at the time. “[…] The Puritans were concerned, perhaps even obsessed, with establishing a system wherein religion would flourish and their values and beliefs would penetrate every aspect of life, both sacred and secular” (Friedman). Famous for their incorporation of religion in laws and the famous witch trials which they held, the Puritans found their way into literature. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the Puritans play a significant role as most of the characters in both pieces of literature are Puritans themselves. The Puritans believed in the ideas of sin, defined as “An immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law” (Oxford 773), redemption, defined as “The action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil” (Oxford 700), and justice, defined as “Just behavior or treatment” (Oxford 452). Within the Puritan societies set in The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible, the characters also believed in and acted upon these ideas, to a certain extent.…

    • 1761 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Puritan Era was the most religious time in American history; committing any sin was seen as an act of rebellion. In that time the sin of adultery was taken very literally to an extent where the women were forced to wear the letter “A” across their bosom to show the people of the town what they had committed. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne’s sin results in such a punishment, but as the reader gets deeper into the book, a prominent and more profound understanding of Hester can be reached. It is through her struggles that Hawthorne gets across his primary themes. Hawthorne illustrates his theme through Hester's struggles that becoming an outcast can help one achieve a profound grasp of who they truly…

    • 697 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Damned Women: an Analysis

    • 1820 Words
    • 8 Pages

    order to understand how and why the Puritan society these rvomen the way they do. In the first chapter, an investigation of how Puritan theology functioned as a lived religion is introduced.…

    • 1820 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    After all, it was what people came to America for in the first place. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes about the early Puritanical belief system and the ideas of a Puritan society. In his short story, “The Man of Adamant,” Hawthorne speaks negatively about the Puritan beliefs-- despite being raised in a Puritan household. According to him, those who are rigid in their beliefs will become isolated from the rest of the world. He talks about how the Puritans become lonely and isolated and kept from heaven, because of their inflexibility and resistance to change.…

    • 1733 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Life In Puritan Times

    • 493 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Life during the Puritan colonies were based upon God’s law. They believed the bible was the key to salvation. They also believed that people were either born sinful, and bound to a life in Hell, or they were destined to to be saved. The only thing that could save their life was purity and pray. Puritans believed in hard work and discipline in life with religious jobs. People who were engaging in sinful activities were humiliated in public and punished for their sinful acts.…

    • 493 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Puritan Research Paper Over three hundred eighty-seven years ago, in 1630, the Puritans came to the New World and changed it forever. The Puritans, a group of people came to America from England to explore, make money, to spread and practice their religion freely, and to live in a land of their own. Through examining various pieces of literature that the Puritans created it is quite simple to see the different cultural virtues and beliefs that made up their lifestyle and how it reflected back onto them in the cultural effects. The Puritans that came to the New World had many different values and beliefs including their views on God, their use of authority and persecution, and lastly their constant pessimism.…

    • 918 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Is Hester A Sinner

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages

    They used their freedom by judging those who sinned in an attempt to force their religious views on anybody they encountered. Another example of the way the Puritans treated Hester was when she was forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her bosom which symbolized that she was an adulterer. These incidents became a learning experience for Hester and allowed her to transform into an overall better person because she accepted her wrongdoings. Her sins showed Hawthorne’s purpose for the story. Hawthorne’s intention for The Scarlet Letter was to show that everyone is a sinner, and it cannot be avoided.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Scarlet Letter is a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It takes place in a small village inhabited by puritans around the 17th century, in Boston. This essay will be mainly focused on the character of Hester, the holder of the scarlet letter. It will show the difference in the good and bad that happens within her life throughout the novel. Hester Prynne is one of the main characters in this novel.…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Scarlet Letter”, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the narrator tells a series of events that occurred years before his time. The events take place in the seventeenth century in Massachusetts, in what was a Puritan settlement at this time. This story surrounds, a young woman, who has committed a sin of adultery and therefore is punished by the town. Hester Prynne, the young lady, is sentenced to public shaming, where she is to stand on a scaffold in front of the town. Hester is not only publicly shamed by standing on a scaffold, but she also forced to wear the ‘A’.…

    • 899 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hester is ushered into a sort of exile while wearing the scarlet letter, her punishment for adultery. She no longer worries as much about appeasing the desires of society. This leads to her thinking more boldly about society and herself. “The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss” (Hawthorne 134). Hester’s punishment leads her into a “moral wilderness” lacking rules or guidance. This is ironic in that her punishment was intended to aid in her atonement, but instead leads her even farther astray. Hester’s mind is amidst a struggle with the aftermath of her sin. Her contemplation of her sinfulness leads to feelings of affinity and an understanding of others. She begins to do public service by bringing food to the poor, nursing the sick, and becomes a source of aid in times of trouble. These actions make it appear as though Hester may be accepted regardless of her sin. However, the Puritan superiors view all sin as a threat to the community that should be punished and suppressed. Throughout the story, Hester is portrayed as intelligent and capable, but not extraordinary. By doing these services…

    • 790 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays