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The impact of religion on American literature
Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of symbols
Hawthornes use of symbols in his essays
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When you assert that “The Gentle Boy” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a “heart-wrenching story that presents an eloquent, sympathetic portrait of Quakers as they confront Puritan persecution in Colonial New England,” you are summarizing the story in an inaccurate manner. Although it may be true that within the short story there exists a sectarian tension between the religions, Catharine, the Quaker, is not idealized as a victim and Dorothy, the Puritan, is not portrayed as a persecutor. In actuality, Catharine is a wild, overzealous, and unpredictable woman who neglects her responsibilities as a mother. Dorothy, whom you would typecast as a narrow-minded Puritan persecutor, is an ideal mother, a tender and kind human being who puts her instincts before what her religion may dictate. Hawthorne uses the distinction between Dorothy and Catharine to convey the true meaning of the story; extremism and excessive devotion to religion not only dilutes the mind but also warps natural core beliefs that a person should hold and adhere to. Hawthorne consistently critiques the importance that people place on religion and redefines the role it plays in our lives.
Although Dorothy may align herself with certain Puritan ideologies, she does not allow for her group’s bias to warp her personal beliefs on how one should be treated. Surrounded by a group of persecutors, Dorothy remains pure and innocent. She exemplifies this when she first meets Ilbrahim and treats him as her own child and reassures him to “Fear not, little boy, you shall not need a mother, and a kind one. Dry your tears, Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother ”(114). Immediately after describing the gruesome manner in which the Puritans dispose of the Quakers, Dorothy meets ...
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...o influence her more valuable core beliefs, Dorothy is a clearer thinker and is more courageous than her fellow Puritans. Hawthorne points out that even Tobias, her husband who is clearly sporting “his military rank” is extremely hesitant and does not separate himself from the crowd. Hawthorne effectively uses the contrasting characters of Catharine and Dorothy to show how Ilbrahim flourishes in an environment in which the excessive attachment to religion is not encouraged. If my essay has not made it clear enough, I would also like to provide you with a new and revised book jacket for you to consider. In the powerful short story, “The Gentle Boy”, Nathaniel Hawthorne analyzes the importance of religion in one’s life and contrasts the mothers Catharine and Dorothy to emphasize that religious doctrine should never trump love, independent thought, and human relations.
Religion was the foundation of the early Colonial American Puritan writings. Many of the early settlements were comprised of men and women who fled Europe in the face of persecution to come to a new land and worship according to their own will. Their beliefs were stalwartly rooted in the fact that God should be involved with all facets of their lives and constantly worshiped. These Puritans writings focused on their religious foundations related to their exodus from Europe and religions role in their life on the new continent. Their literature helped to proselytize the message of God and focused on hard work and strict adherence to religious principles, thus avoiding eternal damnation. These main themes are evident in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mathers, and John Winthrop. This paper will explore the writings of these three men and how their religious views shaped their literary works, styles, and their historical and political views.
During the pioneer developmental stages of the United States, early colonists traveled and endured through prolonged distances from England to the New World in order to escape religious persecution, rooted mainly from Protestant beliefs. These early colonists were deeply embedded within their Puritanism and surrounded their overall livelihood based on the teachings of the Puritan Bible in the unchartered British colonies of North America. However, these Puritans were not the only living cultures in the New World as they eventually discovered the Native Americans within their mist. Throughout this early time period of American culture, these two cultures of Puritans and Native Americans clashed and waged war upon each other to take control of the western plains of North America. Evidently, the carnage ceased with the victors, those of English descent, recording history from a bias perspective. Therefore, the ideology from the contrasting juxtapositions of right versus wrong, good versus evil, and light versus dark are predetermined by the religious dogma the colonist faithfully followed. However, there are a multitude of consequences for blindly following strict ideologies from a gospel as criticized in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romantic novel, The Scarlet Letter, which demonstrates the inane degrees of which society or people try to ostracize sinners through cruel and unusual punishment which stems from hatred when the irony and reality of the situation reveals that no one is perfect enough to sit upon a high pedestal, that mistakes or errors made are a natural process of human capabilities, and that forgiveness is a quality that provides a person humanity rather than expediting punishment. Hawthorne utilizes visual symbolisms to spec...
Wright grew up in the Jim Crow South where everything about his life was socially and culturally inferior to the white masses. In Bloom’s Modern Critical Views Richard Wright, Qiana J. Whitted wrote about Wright’s life as a kid, shedding light on how his grandmother forced him to partake in religious in order to be saved from “religious execution” (123). It was this type of religious interpretation held by his grandmother, that was a “cultural marker” for Wright, reminding us, “that in his life, as in his writing, Richard Wright wrestled with his faith” (122). This struggle can be seen in Wright’s male character, Big Boy, in Big Boy Leaves Homes. Big Boy and his friends go to swimming creek where they see and are saw by a white woman. With the woman, was a white man who shot at Big Boy and his friends. Big Boy wrestles with Jim over the gun and ends up shooting and killing him. In panic, he runs home to retell the story of the murder he committed and the ones he witnessed. As he tells the story, his father sends for some of the religious members in the community. During this time Big Boy’s mother calls out several times for mercy, “Lawd Gawd in Heaven, have mercy on us all!” (36). The religious community members become a fist around Big Boy and come up with a plan for saving his life. In the midst of this Big Boy experiences an internal conflict with his actions and how they look in the eyes of God.
“Young Goodman Brown” is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The literary work entails a young man’s journey into the woods one night and stumbles upon a variety of people that will change his life forever, but not for the better. The overall tone for the passage is more skeptical in the beginning as Brown tries to figure out his stand on the subject of his puritan faith, however, the it shifts towards a more traffic tenor at the end as he lives with the consequences of his choices from the night in the woods when he decided to walk along side with the weary old traveler. Young Brown proclaims during his journey, “‘Faith! Faith!’ as if bewildered wretches were seeking her, all through the wilderness… ‘My Faith is gone!’ cried he,
For an attempt to purify a religious community of sin, the Puritans in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, have numerous faults due to their blindness of their own hypocrisy. Starting at the beginning of the text, women begin gossiping about Hester. The women talk about how Hester will cover her letter, how they wouldn’t take mercy on her as the magistrates have and how Reverend Dimmesdale,”her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation” (Hawthorne 53). So because they also enjoy elaborate things, the children and virgin women do very un-Puritan like things, and how Dimmesdale himself is a hypocrite all show hypocrisy within the Puritan Society; however, children learn by how their parents act and what they do, so the Puritans within the text are following their
Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlett Letter is an American Classic and has proved to be a great contribution to American Literature. Hawthorne has allowed his readers insight into a Puritan past that held strict principles and unyielding consequences that he was all too familiar with and haunted by these horror stories of his heritage led by his own ancestors. In composing this tale Hawthorne presents a realistic image of the 16th Century and threads the importance of his knowledge of the Transcendentalist movement which brought focus to the nature of life and the right of individuals to pursue their natural desire a great contrast to the Puritanic existence he was so custom to. Although the author Nathaniel Hawthorne had doubts about the seriousness of his work, his novel The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, gained huge recognition and notoriety because of its insight into a changing American culture and the issues that would shift its' direction. Hawthorne was born in 1804 on July fourth in Salem Massachusetts. Hawthorne’s heritage went back six generations in Salem where he was raised and reared for manhood. His own ancestors had been there to judge in the Salem Witch Trial of the seventeenth century. This undoubtedly was one of the many things that shaped and influenced this American author’s style in this and many of his other works.
Point of view is an essential element to a reader's comprehension of a story. The point of view shows how the narrator thinks, speaks, and feels about any particular situation. In Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson," the events are told through the eyes of a young, mischievous girl named Sylvia who lives in a lower class neighborhood. The reader gets a limited point of view of view because the events are told strictly by Sylvia. This fact can influence the reader to see things just as she does. The strong language gives an unfamiliar reader an illustration of how people in the city speak. Bambara does this to show the reader that kids from lower class neighborhoods are affected by their environment due to lack of education and discipline, that how different one part of society is from another, and that kids learn from experience. We also get an insight of Sylvia’s feisty, rebellious nature and her lack of respect towards people with an education.
The first framework that would be beneficial when working with this population is the Dual Perspective Framework. The Dual Perspective Framework is a model that charges the social worker with assessing and understanding the client’s world. While doing so, one must take into account the client’s relationship to not only their immediate family and community, but also to the larger societal system while considering and comparing values, attitudes, and behaviors (Prigoff, 2003, p. 80). Another way to explain the Dual Perspective was presented by Dr. Nimmagadda as part of the diversity section of this course (2015). The contrasting views are also known as the “Nurturing Environment” versus the “Sustaining Environment.” The “Nurturing Environment” can be identified as the individual’s family or immediate extended family, while the “Sustaining Environment” can be identified as how an individual feels other’s view them in the social environment (Nimmagadda, 2015). An individual can evolve and change according to their experiences and interactions in both environments.
At ten years old, Dorothy’s brothers joined the church choir and Dorothy started to attend church every Sunday. She was amused by all the songs and hymns sung in the church. With this, Dorothy found herself attached so she began to study Christianity. She wanted to be confirmed as a Catholic and also baptized so studying would help her to do so. Dorothy’s favorite thing to do was read. She read all types of novels from various important authors and at the age of sixteen ended up winning a scholarship enrollment to the University of Illinois.
Both works revolves inner workings of Puritan societies, and how their values conflict greatly with human nature and end in large amounts of pain and regret. Miller and Hawthorne’ s opinions on hypocrisy in society, treatment of the outsider, and Puritanical ideals about sin and forgiveness all can be seen by what they wrote in their own respective works.
The author Henry James called Nathaniel Hawthorne “the most valuable example of American genius”, expressing the widely held belief that he was the most significant fiction writer of the antebellum period. (The Norton Anthology of American Literature) Will we recognize an example, a certain expository shape, to Hawthorne 's representation of the puritan woman, and to his depiction of relationships to a great extent? I think the answer is, decidedly, yes it is clearly distinguished, a few years prior, by Nina Baym in her hash-settling paper "Impeded Nature: Nathaniel Hawthorne as Feminist." Baym contends that a considerable lot of the stories we most esteem and regularly instruct make a managed examination out of and an effective assault upon-male
Anne Bradstreet starts off her letter with a short poem that presents insight as to what to expect in “To My Dear Children” when she says “here you may find/ what was in your living mother’s mind” (Bradstreet 161). This is the first sign she gives that her letter contains not just a mere retelling of adolescent events, but an introspection of her own life. She writes this at a very turbulent point in history for a devout Puritan. She lived during the migration of Puritans to America to escape the persecution of the Catholic Church and also through the fragmentation of the Puritans into different sects when people began to question the Puritan faith.
Salem, Massachusetts in 1835 was home to a community of Puritans, a sect of Calvinists. This was during the American Romanticism period when human nature was to be embraced as a good, natural thing like a sign from God. Nathaniel Hawthorne went against this, saying that humans are not perfect, so their nature should not be embraced. He wrote Young Goodman Brown in 1835. Similar to his other works, this short story has themes of sin, hypocrisy, and flawed humanity. Hawthorne uses archetypical symbols in “Young Goodman Brown” to embody the wickedness and vileness of human nature.
Secret sin and hypocrisy are interwoven into the plots of both “The Minister’s Black Veil” and “Young Goodman Brown”. Hawthorne teaches us that sin can take both a physical and spiritual form, as seen in the dark veil Reverend Hooper wears on his face. The story of Goodman Brown creates an idea that no one is exempt from sin and believing the opposite could potentially cause your destruction. Hawthorne’s view of human nature is clearly seen in the way he presents both of these stories. Both the congregation in Milford and the people of Salem share the same hypocritical traits that Hawthorne negates severely by causing those people to lead to the main character’s destruction. Hawthorne’s ultimate lesson, however, is that no one, not even the most innocent of children, will ever be able to secretly steal the cookie from the cookie jar.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of rhetorical devices allows for a vivid connection to be drawn between his novel and the Bible. The use of symbolism, paradox, allusions, and characterization create a story that has in it the underlying of Bible stories. The use of the most widely read book as a pillar for his novel strengthens Hawthorne’s criticism and commentary on the Puritan society.