Below is a free excerpt of scarlet letter argumentative essay from anti essays, your source for free research papers, essays, and term paper examples. A lot of people today would agree with rogers chillingworth that you should confess your sin publicly so you can show that you are also liable to sin. People in the church would agree simply because they would like to know that they aren’t the only ones committing sins and that it is true that there isn’t anyone who is perfect. Some would also agree because living in a world of untruth could lead you into this utter state of vast depression due to hiding your true colors and eventually could cause sickness as it did to dimmesdale. Dimmesdale was getting eaten up alive because he was conflicted within himself with his sin. So i understand why people would side with chillingworth, but using that philosophy has been proven to be sometimes not the best idea for peoples lives, careers, and fortune. It has been proven in society that everyone has done something that is a sin or just simply frowned upon.

Discuss the relationship between the scarlet letter and hester rsquo s identity. Why does she repeatedly refuse to stop wearing the letter? what is the difference between the identity she creates for herself and the identity society assigns to her? for hester, to remove the scarlet letter would be to acknowledge the power it has in determining who she is. The letter would prove to have successfully restricted her if she were to become a different person in its absence. Hester chooses to continue to wear the letter because she is determined to transform its meaning through her actions and her own self perception mdash she wants to be the one who controls its meaning. Society tries to reclaim the letter rsquo s symbolism by deciding that the ldquo a rdquo stands for ldquo able, rdquo but hester resists this interpretation. The letter symbolizes her own past deed and her own past decisions, and she is the one who will determine the meaning of those events.

Upon her return from europe at the novel rsquo s end, hester has gained control over both her personal and her public identities. She has made herself into a symbol of feminine repression and charitable ideals, and she stands as a self appointed reminder of the evils society can commit. In fact, it is europe, not america, that the book presents as a place of potential. There, anonymity can protect an individual and allow him or her to assume a new identity.

Dissertation Topics Environmental Science

This unexpected inversion leads the characters and the reader to question the principles of freedom and opportunity usually identified with america. Hester rsquo s experiences suggest that this country is founded on the ideals of repression and confinement. Additionally, the narrator rsquo s own experiences, coming approximately two hundred years after hester rsquo s, confirm those of his protagonist. His fellow customs officers owe their jobs to patronage and family connections, not to merit, and he has acquired his own position through political allies.

Thus, the customhouse is portrayed as an institution that embodies many of the principles that america supposedly opposes. Much of the social hypocrisy presented in the book stems from america rsquo s newness. Insecure in its social order, the new society is trying to distance itself from its anglican origins yet, at the same time, reassure itself of its legitimacy and dignity. It is a difficult task to ldquo define rdquo oneself as a land of self defining individuals.

But it is this project of defining america that hawthorne himself partially undertakes in his novel. Discuss the difference between the puritans rsquo use of symbols the meteor, for example and the way that the narrator makes use of symbols. Do both have religious implications? do symbols foreshadow events or simply comment on them after the fact? how do they help the characters understand their lives, and how do they help the reader understand hawthorne rsquo s book? the puritans in this book are constantly seeking out natural symbols, which they claim are messages from god.

Latest Legal Essay Topics

They interpret the symbols only in ways that confirm their own preformulated ideas or opinions. The meteor that streaks the sky as dimmesdale stands on the scaffold in chapter 12 is a good example of this phenomenon. To dimmesdale and to the townspeople, the ldquo a rdquo that the meteor traces in the sky represents whatever notion already preoccupies them. To the minister, the meteor exposes his sin, while to the townspeople it confirms that the colony rsquo s former governor, who has just died, has gone to heaven and been made an angel. For the narrator, on the other hand, symbols function to complicate reality rather than to confirm one rsquo s perception of it. The governor rsquo s garden, which hester and pearl see in chapter 7, illustrates his tactic quite well. The narrator does not describe the garden in a way that reinforces the image of luxury and power that is present in his description of the rest of the governor rsquo s house.

Rather, he writes that the garden, which was originally planted to look like an ornamental garden in the english style, is now full of weeds, thorns, and vegetables. The garden seems to contradict much of what the reader has been told about the governor rsquo s power and importance, and it suggests to us that the governor is an unfit caretaker, for people as well as for flowers. The absence of any flowers other than the thorny roses also hints that ideals are often accompanied by evil and pain. Confronted by the ambiguous symbol of the garden, we begin to look for other inconsistencies and for other examples of decay and disrepair in puritan society. Discuss the function of physical setting in the scarlet letter. what is the relationship between the book rsquo s events and the locations in which these events take place? do things happen in the forest that could not happen in the town? what about time of day? does night bring with it a set of rules that differs from those of the daytime? 2. Is the scarlet letter a protofeminist novel? had hester not been a woman, would she have received the same punishment? when hester undertakes to protect other women from gender based persecution, can we interpret her actions as pointing to a larger political statement in the text as a whole? 3.