The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne

Gothic literature focuses on the darkest aspects of humanity. It was written in response to the change the authors faced in everyday life, as well as the challenges of world events. Gothic literature is a sub genre of the Romantic Movement, a...

Despite the notion of a utopian society, absolute perfection ceases to exist simultaneously with the human race. Mistakes have inevitably plagued humans since the commencement of civilization, but it is the accountability for these failures, not...

The 19th century philosophy of transcendentalism, championed by the profound literary figures of the century such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, was an accumulation of ideas built on the principles of individualism and...

As each novel and investigation into the human mind and spirit has demonstrated, we are creatures who crave honor and respect, the two key tenets to having dignity. Without dignity, we are nothing. Without respect, we fall to a lesser state - a...

Upon mere glance, it becomes immediately apparent that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” share many common themes, including good versus evil, heart versus mind, and the nature of...

Puritanism was a religious reform movement in the late 16th and 17th centuries that tried to purify the Church of England of remnants of the Roman Catholic popery. Puritans were central to American writing, history and even culture. They brought...

American fiction has been dominated by historical romances since Sir Walter Scott coined the genre with Waverley in 1814. American historical fiction indicates that the literature is unique in its character to any other nation; but instead, in ‘...

“In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. [...] Every great work of art [...] is a celebration, an act of...

In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the Compson family experiences a downward spiral accelerated mainly by two of the novel’s central characters: Caddy and Quentin Compson. Caddy’s sexuality, pregnancy, and banishment from the Compson...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is set in Salem, Massachusetts in 1642, while Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame takes place in Paris, France in 1482. Despite their vastly different settings, Hawthorne’s heroine Hester Prynne and...

The Scarlet Letter and Beloved, despite their vastly different settings, both emphasize the effect of community on an individual. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, set in Boston in 1642, the rigidly Puritan society criminalizes a young...