The preface to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter‚ “The Custom House”‚ serves to introduce the society and times in which the story is set; also‚ this essay provides the background story for the finding of the scarlet letter. The Custom House also provides a definition of what a romance is. Excerpts from “The Custom House” essay closely link to The Scarlet Letter’s text. Two notable examples of these parallels can be found in the descriptions given of the townspeople in Salem who live by ancient moral
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Selena Martinez Mrs. King AP English III-3 September 16‚ 2013 Rhetorical Analysis on the Scarlet Letter Hawthorne successfully portrays the use of extended metaphors‚ foreshadowing and language throughout the Scarlet Letter to easily grab hold or grasp the reader’s attentive minds. First of all the utilization of the extended metaphors-the lengthening of the average metaphor was developed in this passage to thoroughly describe Pearls reaction to Reverend Dimmesdale’s approach. “The child
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The beautifully composed novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrates the effects of sin through the actions of his characters and circumstances they must bear daily. While living in a world with many complexities the temptation of sin lurks everywhere. Most sins‚ the offences against one’s morals‚ are ordinarily committed to seek pleasure. Similar to that of Hester Prynne along with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s sin: “…this had been a sin of passion‚ not of principle nor even purpose
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Transformation The setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet letter” is crucial to the understanding of the event that takes place in the story. The setting of the story is in Salem‚ Massachusetts during the Puritan era. During the Puritan era‚ adultery was taken as a very serious sin‚ and this is what Hester and Dimmesdale committ with each other. Because of the sin‚ their lives change‚ Hester has to walk around in public with a Scarlet Letter “A” which stands for adultery‚ and she is constantly
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Daniele Luetke AP English 12/20/12 Nature Essay The Role of Nature In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter‚ there are several chapters devoted to nature and its role in the novel. Every main character has some kind of an interaction with nature. In the beginning of the novel‚ Hawthorne relates a rosebush to the footsteps of Ann Hutchinson who‚ in the eyes of early Puritan society‚ was a criminal. However‚ nature knows she was innocent‚ so it responded to her with a pure rosebush. Whether
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EXAMINE THE SCARLET LETTER AS AN OPEN-ENDED NOVEL Hawthorne wrote during the Romantic Period in American literature which lasted from 1830 to 1865. Ralph Waldo Emerson‚ Henry David Thoreau‚ Herman Melville‚ Harriet Beecher Stowe‚ Edgar Allen Poe‚ and Walt Whitman were his literary contemporaries. The Scarlet Letter is considered a piece of American Romantic literature because it is set in a remote past‚ the Puritan era 200 years prior to Hawthorne’s time‚ and because it deals with the interior
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The Scarlet Letter: The Theme of Punishment Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter deals with many themes‚ the most powerful being punishment. In this novel‚ Hester Prynne becomes a highly respected person in a Puritan society by overcoming one of the harshest punishments‚ the scarlet letter. This object on "her bosom"; however‚ does the exact opposite of that which it was meant for. Eventually‚ Hester Prynne inverts all the odds against here due to her
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Perhaps the foremost purpose of The Scarlet Letter is to illustrate the difference between shaming someone in public and allowing him or her to suffer the consequences of an unjust act privately. According to the legal statutes at the time and the prevailing sentiment of keeping in accordance with a strict interpretation of the Bible‚ adultery was a capital sin that required the execution of both adulterer and adulteress--or at the very least‚ severe public corporal punishment. Indeed‚ even if the
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Symbolism The scarlet ibis is a carefully chosen symbol. To understand why‚ it helps to know a little about the bird. A native of the South American tropics‚ the scarlet ibis is vivid red. Its color derives from the shrimps that form the bulk of its diet; if there are no shrimps‚ it loses its color. It needs a particular habitat in order to thrive as it only feeds in shallow waters along the coast‚ in mud flats and lagoons. The scarlet ibis is an endangered species which has not bred successfully
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events that happened in the middle of the seventeenth century. The narrator decides to write about Hester Prynnes experiences but with uninspiring men he is not able to. When a new president is elected‚ the narrator starts to write a story called The Scarlet Letter. Next‚ we learn about Hester Prynne. She is tall with dark hair. The first thing she does is that she comes out of a prison holding an infant with the letter “A” on her chest. There are many criticisms as Hester walks through the crowd about
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