Henry Leader
THE SCARLET LETTER
* Title: The Scarlet Letter * Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne * Author DOB: July 4, 1804 - May 19, 1864 * Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Novel * Setting: Mid-17th Century/Boston, Massachusetts * Social Milieu: This novel, The Scarlet Letter, takes place in a time period of which acts such as Adultery were frowned upon. The sanctity of marriage was not taken lightly back then. People who committed Adultery were publicly shamed, and worse. Now in present times, Adultery is not seen as horrible, for some reason. For this reason, I believe the Social Milieu of this novel is very important. * Protagonist: Hester Prynne * Antagonist: Roger Chillingworth * Point of View: The narrator is an unnamed person (customhouse surveyor). He is obviously omniscient, in that he seems to know everything about the characters. Yet, I believe that he is also a subjective narrator because of the way he voices his own opinions and interpretations of different things. * Tone: Detached, Complex, Skeptical, Moralizing.
“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.” (1)
-The narrator is very detached. He doesn't show any feeling toward these Puritans one way or another, although over time we get the sense that he sees some problems with their community. It's also extremely complex writing, with lots of clauses and modifiers. * Style: Ornate, Formal, Thorny, Biblical, Shadowy.
“Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always at another's board and endure the lifelong chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireplace, it truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician,
* Title: The Scarlet Letter * Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne * Author DOB: July 4, 1804 - May 19, 1864 * Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Novel * Setting: Mid-17th Century/Boston, Massachusetts * Social Milieu: This novel, The Scarlet Letter, takes place in a time period of which acts such as Adultery were frowned upon. The sanctity of marriage was not taken lightly back then. People who committed Adultery were publicly shamed, and worse. Now in present times, Adultery is not seen as horrible, for some reason. For this reason, I believe the Social Milieu of this novel is very important. * Protagonist: Hester Prynne * Antagonist: Roger Chillingworth * Point of View: The narrator is an unnamed person (customhouse surveyor). He is obviously omniscient, in that he seems to know everything about the characters. Yet, I believe that he is also a subjective narrator because of the way he voices his own opinions and interpretations of different things. * Tone: Detached, Complex, Skeptical, Moralizing.
“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.” (1)
-The narrator is very detached. He doesn't show any feeling toward these Puritans one way or another, although over time we get the sense that he sees some problems with their community. It's also extremely complex writing, with lots of clauses and modifiers. * Style: Ornate, Formal, Thorny, Biblical, Shadowy.
“Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always at another's board and endure the lifelong chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireplace, it truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician,