Scarlet Letter Outcast Essay

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Have you ever felt like an outcast? Have you ever felt like everyone around you thinks you’re insane? Do you ever get that feeling that your difference from everyone else is a brand on your forehead or a stain in your clothes that won’t come out? In her novel, Their Friend Scarlet, Victoria Kahler says, “She felt just like that girl in that book with the letter A on her chest. Only her A signified Alone. She was an outcast, cast out by her own choices, an outsider with a pretty face. Like a rose, she may have been beautiful to look at, but almost everyone only knew the thorny side,” (“Quotes About Outcast”). Everyone wears a letter on their chest. It is something that distinguishes him or her from every other person. Unfortunately, more times …show more content…

In it, the main character Hester is forced to wear a red, or more specifically scarlet, letter “A” on her dress because she had conceived a daughter under an adulterous affair, which, at the time, was an extremely punishable offence. Hawthorne uses the punishment she did receive to illustrate that even the worst of offenders sometimes deserve a second chance. However, this is not the only claim that Hawthorne makes about Hester’s predicament. Hawthorne writes in his book that Hester became an outcast when she committed adultery. When she was branded with the scarlet letter, it exposed to the society she lived in what she truly was: different. She proved to the community that she was indeed human and yes, she did make mistakes. Hester paid for those mistakes and was cast out from society. However, over the course of the story, the reader begins to notice that the other characters in the book begin to care less and less as time goes on. Hester gradually becomes reintegrated into society as her and her daughter, Pearl, grow up. The hatred for being different is no longer an issue to deal with as it is virtually nonexistent and Hester can return to the life she previously had. This is just an example of what the power of time can truly …show more content…

Imagine you were born with something that distinguished you from others. Maybe you have a birthmark on your face, or maybe you were born albino. You could have a case of heterochromia or just have a gigantic nose. Whatever it is, it distinguishes you from other members of society, and there’s nothing you can do to change it. Is it fair then, for you to not get the same opportunities or privileges that another, more “normal” person could have? Believe it or not, it has happened before on a mass

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