Compare And Contrast The Scarlet Letter And The Crucible

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Many times while reading the novel “The Scarlet Letter” and the playwright, “The Crucible” I noticed many similarities; many things that made me remember the other, but it was amazing to also see the differences between the two stories. Each plot has a different twist, something that makes it completely original. The two plots had a lot in common, affairs, lying, and ultimately sinful acts and the gnawing guilt you feel from sin. Although, the two stories have a lot that is not so common; levels of hysteria, the source of the chaos, as well as the final outcome.

The first major comparison was the most obvious, a relation to an affair… a sin so common, yet so devastating. In both “The Crucible” and “The Scarlet Letter”, two people commit a sin known as adultery. This adultery during the …show more content…

In “The Crucible”, John Proctor rather gave up his life that his name; John hanged that day, accused of witchcraft, “The Scarlet Letter” too has a death in its conclusion, but Hester Pryne continues on with life. “The Scarlet Letter” displayed a less traumatic ending, juxtaposed to “The Crucible”. In “The Scarlet Letter”, in the final chapter it talks about Hester’s return to their small colony after Pearl had grown, “But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed,—of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it,—resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But . . . the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, and yet with reverence,

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