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The thesis of shame
The thesis of shame
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As an individual, it’s a part of life to make plenty of mistakes, but is public shaming the answer to solving it? In todays’ society, punishment for people is completely different from back in the Puritan days. For example, in the novel the Scarlett Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery which leads her to having to wear the letter “A” on her chest which is a form of public humiliation but in this sense, it’s not right. This is Hester Prynne’s sin that she committed that she lives with forever and it shouldn’t be any of the public business for her to be humiliated even more. Public shaming is extremely immoral in today’s society because as an individual that has done something wrong, you will start to feel like an outcast besides having to endure humiliation for your actions. (Article 1) To start off, public humiliation is a form ridicule which is a complete mockery. This is a way of degrading someone and their position while people gather to taunt, tease, and verbally abuse one emotionally. When an individual is humiliated for what he or she has done, it already hurts them deep down inside which causes them to feel …show more content…
It’s not fair that your problems should be out for the public to see because what comes with that is bullies that doesn’t care about your thoughts, opinions, or feelings. The author state, “sometimes compare it to bullies in a schoolyard all ganging up on person who, for one second, said the wrong thing” (Leopold, Todd. The price of public shaming in the Internet age. Modern, 2015.) The shaming is becoming more relentless because society is starting to commit the crime by shaming the individual that is being publicly shamed by the whole public to see. For example, many people including children, may have the mentality that supports public humiliation. They’ll start to think that it is acceptable to humiliate people on the regular basis which can be a
Explaining that not only does it subvert pleasures, it tramples “novel notions” for the sake of tradition, and encourages an impotent “moderation” (896, 1060). For Unjust Speech, he sees no reason to simply endure this façade when one can theoretically work around it. Unjust Speech encourages resistance, calling on man to “believe that nothing is shameful!” (1078). This part of his argument displays that Unjust Speech recognizes shame as the essential cornerstone of societal life, yet encourages humans to not let it define them. He advocates for strong individualism against Just Speech’s encouraging words about societal
Children in learning settings may come across various types of experiences like bullying, cyber-bullying, discrimination, etc. These types of experiences where perpetrator could also be a child or a group of children can disturb the process of learning. It also has long term effects on the child being bullied and the child/ group of children who are bullying.
letter *A* embroidered on her chest. The A served as a symbol of her crime, was
“Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished; the other can only be hurt.'; This is a very interesting quote, and depending what you make of it, it can be very confusing. To most people this quote might not mean anything, but you
In an introductory paragraph to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works, Perkins and Perkins say that “Hawthorne elevated some of the darkest events of the colonial period and transformed them into universal themes and questions”(Perkins 433). One of these themes is that of the penalty of sin. In Romans 6:23, Paul says that “the wages of sin is death” and Hawthorne seems to share this view, or at least some version of it. This view is prevalent in his novel The Scarlet Letter. In it, the penalty for Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale’s sin is a family that is disfigured and unnatural.
Although the government has no direct place in the silencing an individual’s convictions; however unpopular, no such immunity is given in the case of one’s peers. The judgement of one’s peers is almost always enough to silence any dissenting opinions. The social cost of an unpopular opinion Twain writes: “... can ruin a man in his business, it can lose him his friends, it can subject him to public insult and abuse, it can ostracize his unoffending family, and make his house a despised and unvisited solitude (Twain).” It is quite ironic that freedom of speech stresses being free, but nevertheless comes with such a great cost to the individual. With such great expense at stake, exercising one’s right to honesty always comes second to maintaining social status. Furthermore, Twain compares the costs of free speech to murder. He writes of free speech: “It ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences (Twain).” Twain rather amusingly juxtaposes the crimes of murder and free speech. The two actions are in theory completely unalike, the former to be punished and the latter to be defended. Yet Twain instead comes to the conclusion that they are actually both privileged and are punished in the same way. Both when committed, immediately condemn an
Guilt is a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, whether real or imagined. There are different types of guilt. Guilt can be caused by a physical thing a person did that he isn’t proud of, or wanted to hide, can be something a person imagined he did to someone or something else, or can be caused when a person did something to his God or religion. Everyone at some time in his or her life has a run in with guilt, and it has a different impact on each person. People, who are feeling guilty because of something they did or said, can influence how other people act and feel. Some people are affected worse by guilt than others, for example, Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter. Talked about in The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale, a man with the deepest guilt, was responsible for the moral well-being of his people. He went against his teachings, committed adultery, and left the woman to suffer publicly alone while he stayed like a hero in the town. On the other hand, sometimes the masses are affected by one person’s guilt. He was affected much more by guilt, because he didn’t tell anyone of what he had done. By keeping guilt internalized, a person ultimately ends up hurting himself. More than seventy percent of all things that make people feel guilty are found out later on in their life by other people. Guilt has three categories that it affects the most in people: physical, mental, and spiritual.
As we read the novel, “The Scarlet Letter,” we were acquainted with the manner the Puritan society branded their sinners contingent on the immoralities they have committed. They believed that punishing these sinners by humiliation was the prominent way for them to bear the cost of their debauchery. Resembling this past our present has been subject to this same form of branding and labeling. We judge the way the Puritan society strictly punished its citizens by putting them on scaffolds where they were publicly humiliated. We hypocritically judge this form of punishment when we are practicing these same immoral acts. Although we are not putting them on scaffolds or literally branding people we are causing them the same kind of degradation and bestowing on them labels that will hurt them the same way.
Sin is defined as a transgression of a religious or moral law especially when deliberate. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne one of the main points in the book is relating to sin and how it can affect people. Hawthorne uses several methods to convey the nature of sin through his characters and symbolism in The Scarlet Letter. The scarlet A on the chest of Hester Prynne and Hester herself represent known sin. She commits adultery and is caught. The A is her punishment as well as a reminder to her about sinning. The child of sin and Hester is named Pearl. She symbolises the product of sin and sin itself. The third member of the sinning perty is Dimsdale. He is loved and treated with respect by the towns people. No one but him knows that he too has sinned. Hawthorne uses that character to represent hidden sin and guilt. Three different aspects of sin represented by three different characters in The Scarlet Letter.
Revenge is the act of retaliating in order to get even with someone for the wrongs they have done. In the novel “The Scarlet Letter,” the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses Roger Chillingworth to reap revenge on Arthur Dimmesdale for his affair with his wife, Hester Prynne. Chillingworth becomes so devoted to revenge that is all his life revolves around. Chillingworth then devotes the rest of his life to taking revenge on Dimmesdale.
Throughout Source A, the book, “The Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne shows public shaming, through Hester Prynne’s sin. As well as, Source B, Monica Lewinsky and her story of “The Price of Shame,” expressed how she fell in love with her boss, the president. Additionally, Source C, an article on public shaming called “Is the Internet a Mob Without Consequence,” written by Nick Bilton, is
Public shaming has been used throughout history as a form of punishment as early as the 1600’s in the Americas and the use of public shame still exists in our societies today, but as a shadow of its former self. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter starts off in the colonies in the Massachusetts Bay in the early 1600’s with most of the colonist being Puritan which is useful to the plot when the Puritan community publicly shames Hester Prynne, the protagonist of the novel, forcing her to wear the letter “A” at all times for being an adulteress. Although public shame may lead to the generalization of specific groups, it is still warranted in our society, but they way it is condoned has changed, for example, if someone is accused of rape, they would not be required to wear the letter “R” for rape, but rather be registered as a sex offender limiting the freedom of the convict. Public shame
In today’s society there are many forms of revenge. Revenge can destroy a person from the inside out. The quest for revenge can become so all consuming that a person can waste their life away and lose who they are in the process. This is demonstrated in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, in one of it’s main characters Roger Chillingworth. Roger Chillingworth spends years attempting to take revenge on the characters Hester Prynn and Arthur Dimmesdale. When Chillingworth is crossed by Hester and Dimmesdale he feels so much anger and pain boiling up inside him that he must act out. The character Chillingworth in the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne becomes the embodiment of evil because of the way he strives to demolish another human being’s life by seeking revenge.
After reading The Scarlet Letter, one might ponder: What certain concepts did Nathaniel Hawthorne use to convey his beliefs? One of the concepts Hawthorne intentionally emphasized was sensibility. The dictionary defines sensibility as “peculiar or excessive susceptibility to pleasurable or painful impression.” These pleasurable or painful impressions are shown when characters use their five senses. Touch, sight, and sound seem to be the most effective senses used. One of Hawthorne’s underlying themes was that there are consequences for sin. Throughout the novel susceptibility played a role in causing and punishing sin.
...anxiety disorders when they grown up. Victims of playground bullies carry physiological scars into adulthood which can have a profound of their life. US study shows that impact of bullying is not something easily outgrown and forgotten, “70 per cent of women and a third of men have faked an orgasm to avoid hurting their parents feeling”. Bullying , which we tend to think of as a normal and not terrible part of childhood , have serious consequences children.