Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
puritanism nathaniel hawthorne
puritanism nathaniel hawthorne
american literature puritans period
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: puritanism nathaniel hawthorne
As much as one may try to avoid sin, everyone will sin at some point in their life. However, there have been groups of people who spend much of their time getting as close to perfection as possible. One of the most extreme groups with this goal were the 17th century Puritans who immigrated from England to America. They set some of the toughest laws to follow and inflicted harsh sentences on those who broke them. Of course there were people who broke these laws and paid the consequences. Usually this was the case because of their pride. Still, not everyone was punished; many people escaped unharmed with their "crimes". Two books written about the Puritan time period, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Crucible by Arthur Miller, show several imperfect characters who have sinned, some who are punished for their actions and others who are not.
The main characters of these two novels are the sinners who receive the harshest penalties of the Puritan system because they are both proud of what they are going through. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne "has to wear the mark of shame upon her bosom" (Hawthorne 59), the letter "A", symbolizing her sin of adultery. Hester choses this punishment over the option of revealing the fellow perpetrator, which shows the pride in what she has done. However, besides her actions with this sin, Hester is a person who follows the Puritan religion very closely and has rarely sinned during her life. She is much more righteous a person than many others in her community. Yet, that one sin makes her look horrible in the eyes of the townspeople. The main character of The Crucible, John Proctor, suffers an even harsher penalty f...
... middle of paper ...
...he sinner is not punished, he or she has still committed a bad deed.
It is easy to see that almost every major character in these two novels has sinned, yet not everyone is punished for it. Among those who suffer the consequences of their actions are the people most proud of them, Hester Prynne and John Proctor. This common trait shows that if these people had not been so proud, they perhaps could have escaped their punishments, as Abigail did. This shows a weakness in the Puritan system of law, where many of the guilty go unpunished. It seems that it would not be difficult to be an impure Puritan.
Work Cited
Edwards, Jonathan. A Young Puritan's Code.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam Books, 1850.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin, 1952.
In conclusion, Rosa Parks was an outstanding hero that helped desegregate the city buses of Montgomery, Alabama. She gained a lot of fellow friendships and also became a civil right Activists. She earned a lot of respect and rewards for her actions of not giving her seat up. As you can see her life her hero story fits very well with Joseph Campbell’s stages of the hero’s
Life - Rosa Parks was born only a month before world war one started in Europe on February 4, 1913. Parks mother worked as a school teacher in Tuskegee, Alabama. James McCauley, Rosa's dad was a carpenter. They lived in Tuskegee and owned farmland of their own. After Sylvester was born, Rosa's little brother, her father left them and went off to live in another town. He had been cheated out of his farmland by a white man and couldn't support the family any longer. Rosa her mother and her brother then moved to live with her grandparents on a farm in Pinelevel, which lay between Tuskegee and Montgomery, Alabama. It was a small plot of land, but it kept them all fed. From this point on Rosa was mainly brought up by her Grandparents with the assistance of her mother. Rosa gave up school when she came close to graduating, around the same time Rosa got married. Raymond Parks married Rosa McCauley December 18, 1932. He was a barber from Wedowee County, Alabama. He had little formal education but a thirst for knowledge. Her husband, Raymond Parks, encouraged her to finish her courses. In 1934 she received her diploma from Alabama State College. She was happy that she completed her education but had little hope of getting a better job. When Rosa had finished school she was lucky enough to get a job as a seamstress in a local sewing factory. Prior to the bus incident Rosa was still fighting. She had run-ins with bus drivers and was evicted from buses. Parks recalls the humiliation: "I didn't want to pay my fare and then go around the back door, because many times, even if you did that, you might not get on the bus at all. They'd probably shut the door, drive off, and leave you standing there."
Rosa Parks was an African American woman who was brave enough to stand up to the whites. Even though she went to jail for what she did, she believes she did the right thing. What Rosa had done on the bus started boycotts and created more and more activists. People wonder if Rosa Parks was raised to stand up for herself or if she was supposed to stay quiet. Looking at Rosa’s life and what happened on the bus and beyond, it can be concluded that she was taught to take pride in her race.
One day on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks took a seat on the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. The bus driver demanded her to move back and Rosa refused. She was arrested that day for vio...
...t had taken a long time for the truth to be revealed in the Scarlet Letter, Hester leaves behind a legacy of bravery for being a mother to the product of a sin and loving with a symbol that represents her sin. Although John Proctor refuses for his name to be put up in the Puritan community for the townspeople to see the crime he has committed, his death is evidence that he did truly care about the injustice in the Puritan society between the wealthy who are guilty of witchery but were not charged and the poor average people who were innocent but accused and prosecuted. Both Arthur Miller and Nathaniel Hawthorne show readers through Hester Prynne and John Proctor that these characters have made mistakes and had integrity to own up to the punishment from the Puritan community. Therefore both characters are significant in many ways to show readers how similar they are.
Sparks of a daunting imperialistic period were galvanized in 1897 when Theodore Roosevelt wrote in a letter, " In strict confidence I should welcome almost any way, for I think this country needs one." In 1890, the year of massacre at Wounded Knee, the Bureau of Census declared the internal frontier closed. The profit system already started looking overseas for expansion. The severe depression beginning in 1893 stimulated the idea of overseas markets for the surplus of American goods.
One of the many literary talents of Nathaniel Hawthorne in the Scarlet Letter is his ability to make a clear contrast between Hester Prynne and the Puritan=s doctrines. As a strict religious community, the Puritans condemned her for her shameful sin of adultery. The words Hawthorne uses to describe Hester and the letter show that her attitude toward the scarlet letter contradicted what the Puritans intended as a merciful punishment. The scarlet letter clearly emphasizes the burning passion Hester holds within her heart.
In summary, Charlotte Temple’s actions are used to directly teach the theme as Rowson wishes.Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his main character in a completely different way. It is common for a reader of The Scarlet Letter to determine that the theme of the story is that adultery is bad, but that is not the case. Hawthorne is not promoting adultery; that is true: As Darrel Abel states in his essay, “Hawthorne’s Hester,” “Although we are expected to love and pity Hester, we are not invited to condone her fault or to construe it as a virtue.”1 Hester Prynne and her lecherous sin are Hawthorne’s means of conveying a different message; Hawthorne is more interested in uncovering the flaws of puritan society and the hypocrisy of their reactions to Hester. The character of Hester Prynne is created as to exploit these flaws indirectly.The Puritan culture is one that recognizes Protestantism, a sect of Christianity. Though a staple of Christianity is forgiveness for one’s sins, this has long been forgotten amongst the women of Boston: “Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding, than in their fair decendants.”2 When Hester is first brought out of her prison cell, the gossiping goodwives recommend much harsher punishments, from a brand on her forehead to death. Hester, who had done little wrong prior to this sin of adultery, is no longer seen as a human being, but merely as a symbol of evil and shame upon the town.
Rosa Parks knew what racial inequality was at a young age. Rosa Louise Mccauley was born on February 4, 1913. She was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents were James and Leona Mccauley. They separated when Rosa Parks was two years old. When she was very young her mom moved her whole family to Pine-Level Alabama to live on their grandpa’s farm. Her brother Sylvester was born in 1915. One of the memories of Rosa Parks’ family was of her Grandpa sitting on a chair outside of the home to protect their farm from the KKK. The KKK would go to African American homes to kill them or burn down their homes. When she got older she went to the City’s Industrial School For Girls then in high school she attended Laboratory School For Secondary Education. Through all of her schooling she attended segregated schools. (Biography 1-2) (Parks 1-2)
Wicked behavior is inside of all humans in one point of their lives. Some behaviors are more wicked than others, but the severity is determined by a matter of opinion. Three of the main characters of The Scarlet Letter are Hester Prynne, Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. The three of them are said to have sinned; two in the same way and one in another. I believe that Roger Chillingworth has committed a greater sin than the sin of Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale for numerous reasons. It also appears that Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses the same opinion as I do.
The central theme in The Scarlet Letter is that manifested sin will ostracize one from society and un-confessed sin will lead to the destruction of the inner spirit. Hawthorne uses the symbol of the scarlet letter to bring out this idea. In the novel, Hester is forced to wear the scarlet letter A (the symbol of her sin) because she committed adultery with the clergyman, Dimmesdale. Because the public's knowledge of her sin, Hester is excluded physically, mentally, and socially from the normal society of the Puritan settlement. She lives on the outskirts of town in a small cottage where she makes her living as a seamstress. Though she is known to be a great sewer amongst the people, Hester is still not able to sew certain items, such as a new bride's veil. Hester also has no interaction with others; instead she is taunted, if not completely ignored, by all that pass her by. Despite the ill treatment of the society, Hester's soul is not corrupted. Instead, she flourishes and improves herself in spite of the burden of wearing the scarlet letter and she repeatedly defies the conventional Puritan thoughts and values by showing what appears to us as strength of character. Her good works, such as helping the less fortunate, strengthen her inner spirit, and eventually partially welcome her back to the society that once shunned her.
In the town each individual is bound by the rules of the Puritan Society. This applies to all the major characters of the story including Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Pearl. To all these characters and everyone else in the town, the town they live in represents civilization and human authority. As a part of the way in which the town is run, every action that seemingly goes against the laws of the Puritan Society is chastised for the whole town to see. A clear example of this is the protagonist of the story Hester Prynne, the protagonist of the story, who is sentenced to wear the scarlet letter for the rest of her life. In addition to the scarlet letter, Hester is forced to stand on top of a scaffold where she is publicly ridiculed. In that scene Hawthorne writes “Knowing well her part, [Hester] ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude… It was almost intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult”(Hawthorne
For half of her life, there had been laws and customs that kept African Americans segregated from the Caucasians. These laws allowed whites to treat blacks without any respect. These actions were never thought to be fair. Even as a child, Rosa protested against disrespectful treatment. Yet, it was very difficult to do anything about the law, when all the law makers were of white ethnicity.
Sins are common and known as mistakes, but in the Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, those mistakes were the cause of suffering at the hands of others. A wrong doing by a Puritan named Hester Pryne caused her to live her life with guilt. She was judged by the Puritan community for the adulterous affair she had with the minister of Boston. Puritans have a strict religion that had many rules which needed to be followed or would lead to severe punishment. Hawthorne indicated a misdeed affecting someone’s life negatively by using symbols like Pearl, the scarlet letter, and the scaffold.
3M's innovation culture comes from the times when the five entrepreneurs who created a company to explore a mine of what they thought being corundum, realized that all they had was a low grade anorthosite, which would not meet the requirements of the booming abrasive industry as they initially believed. Quickly they had to adapt and focus on producing sandpaper products. But it was with McKnight, who joined the company in 1907 has a bookkeeper and later would become Chairman for more than 40 years, that 3M really developed a culture towards systematic innovation. Since then, 3M has been characterized by McKnight's principles of supportive management which encourages employee initiative and innovation: