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The scarlet letter comparison to movie
The scarlet letter comparison to movie
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing style
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The Scarlet Letter, The Green Mile, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Stephen King are the novels and authors that have struck many readers with a frightened character in stories of ridicule and punishment. Anti-transcendentalism and horror are rarely seen as genres people can compare because of their stark, blinding contrasts. However, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Stephen King’s The Green Mile can be noted for their commonalities and their differences in the authors’ styles, the books’ themes, the stories’ plots, and how these books are seen in the classroom. In both of these books, authors’ styles fill them with rhetorical and literary devices such as allusions, symbols, and descriptive diction. In The Green Mile and The Scarlet Letter, there are major Biblical allusions. The Green Mile has symbols through the mouse named Mr. Jingles, John Coffey, and the green mile. The Scarlet Letter has plenty of symbols as well. The rosebush and Pearl are two symbols in The Scarlet Letter. Both authors’ diction always has a purpose with the words they …show more content…
The main allusion would be David and Bathsheba. Their story was of adultery and murder. King David sent Bathsheba’s husband off to war so he could truly be with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11). This allusion was mentioned to compare Prynne’s and Dimmesdale’s affair to that of one with a greater consequence. Cain was mentioned because he committed the first murder and was given a specific mark to symbolize his murder (Gen. 4.15). “With her native energy of character and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it had set a mark upon her more intolerable to a woman’s heart than that which branded the brow of Cain,” (Hawthorne 87). Hester was made to wear the letter ‘A’ which made people treat her like it was the mark of Cain. Her skills were necessary in the community though and she wasn’t completely
Conroy expresses both negative and positive diction to juxtapose the brutal realities of life with the wonderful possibilities in books. He describes books as “dazzling” and “magnificent”. While conversely describing the parents and school boards as “know-nothing” and “cowardly’, which gives the audience a comparison between the two. Since Conroy uses diction to contrast the positive and negative, the audience sees how banning the books makes the parents and school board look like “teacher haters”. The image of teacher haters appeals to the audience’s emotions. This is how he gains their trust. Conroy also uses “grotesque” to describe the violence in his book about the
The song, "Long Black Veil", written by Johnny Cash has many similar elements to The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both have to do with the sin of adultery that ends up hurting the characters in the stories. In "Long Black Veil" a man is convicted of a murder because he cannot provide an alibi for the night that another man was killed. It turns out that the night of the murder, this man had been "in the arms of his best friend's wife." The man ends up being executed while the woman punishes herself for not saving his life by wearing a long black veil. "Long Black Veil" and The Scarlet Letter both demonstrate how secrets can destroy one's life. This theme is shown through the sin of adultery, the punishments that the characters go through and the symbolism of the long black veil and the scarlet letter.
Literary works are always affected by the times and places in which they are written. Those crafted in Western America often reflect conflicts that occurred between advancing civilization and the free spirited individual. The 1970’s was a particularly popular time for authors to introduce new ideas for living in the modern world. There are few authors who captured the essence and feeling of culture quite like Tom Robbins. Robbins comments on the differences and similarities between Western civilization and Eastern philosophies. His text offers philosophical and cultural meaning that is completely original. Certain beliefs are threaded through out the content of the story. He includes significant content reflecting the laws of physics; how motion and force affect the life process. Through the dialogue and action of his characters, Robbins illustrates how two very different ideals can coexist. Robbins intentions are to expand cultural perspectives and awareness through his novels. His use of metaphors and stylistic diction emphasizes further how thoughtful and awesome his work is. Tom Robbins writing offers an insightful perspective into cultural themes of our modern world.
A human being is subject to feelings that range from happiness to depression to indifferent. Whenever an author captures even some of the emotions that a person goes through, the author has made the characters realistic. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson are two perfect examples of authors who master the art of capturing feelings within the characters. Both books display instances where the characters are subject to the feelings of deceit, despair, and dejection; therefore, the characters seem as though they were alive and breathing.
Throughout his literary endeavors, Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes symbolism to present a certain theme that pertains to human nature and life. In his works, The Scarlet Letter and "The Minister's Black Veil", Hawthorne uses symbolism to present a common theme pertaining to religion; that though manifested sin will ostracize a person from society, un-confessed sin will destroy the soul.
Sewall, Richard B. "The Scarlet Letter: Criticism." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 319-27.
Throughout the novel, 'The Scarlet Letter,'; Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates the themes with various dramatic colors. Of the array are the colors green and gold, where green symbolizes different aspects of nature such as tranquility, security, and gloominess, whereas gold represents all that pertains to luxuriance, serenity and goodness. In certain chapters, it seems as if one color is codependent with the other.
Meyer, Michael, ed. "A Study of Three Authors: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O’Connor, and Alice Munro." The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000. 267.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 5th ed. Ed. John Schlib and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 1131-1141. Print.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. Print.
Many people on this earth will commit a sin, they find they wish they had not, and 1 in every 5 Americans suffer from a mental illness. In a story named “Young Goodman Brown” by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, the people in his story have all sinned and meet with the Devil. Then in another story named “The Yellow Wallpaper” by the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman the main character is suffering from a mental illness while her husband, a psychiatrist, tries to help her, but in doing so only makes her condition worse. Throughout both literary texts of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Young Goodman Brown,” the authors show numerous entries of Gothic Literature. And although “Young Goodman Brown” and the “Yellow Wallpaper” share similar Gothic elements, the two stories are very much different.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is one of the most respected and admired novels of all time. Often criticized for lacking substance and using more elaborate camera work, freely adapted films usually do not follow the original plot line. Following this cliché, Roland Joffe’s version of The Scarlet Letter received an overwhelmingly negative reception. Unrealistic plots and actions are added to the films for added drama; for example, Hester is about to be killed up on the scaffold, when Algonquin members arrive and rescue her. After close analysis, it becomes evident of the amount of work that is put into each, but one must ask, why has the director adapted their own style of depicting the story? How has the story of Hester Prynne been modified? Regarding works, major differences and similarities between the characterization, visual imagery, symbolism, narration and plot, shows how free adaptation is the correct term used.
'Young Goodman Brown,' by Hawthorne, and 'The Tell Tale Heart,' by Poe, offer readers the chance to embark on figurative and literal journeys, through our minds and our hearts. Hawthorne is interested in developing a sense of guilt in his story, an allegory warning against losing one's faith. The point of view and the shift in point of view are symbolic of the darkening, increasingly isolated heart of the main character, Goodman Brown, an everyman figure in an everyman tale. Poe, however, is concerned with capturing a sense of dread in his work, taking a look at the motivations behind the perverseness of human nature. Identifying and understanding the point of view is essential, since it affects a reader's relationship to the protagonist, but also offers perspective in situations where characters are blinded and deceived by their own faults. The main character of Poe?s story embarks on an emotional roller coaster, experiencing everything from terror to triumph. Both authors offer an interpretation of humans as sinful, through the use of foreshadowing, repetition, symbolism and, most importantly, point of view. Hawthorne teaches the reader an explicit moral lesson through the third person omniscient point of view, whereas Poe sidesteps morality in favor of thoroughly developing his characters in the first person point of view.
To the uninitiated, the writing of Flannery O'Connor can seem at once cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent. Her short stories routinely end in horrendous, freak fatalities or, at the very least, a character's emotional devastation. Working his way through "Greenleaf," "Everything that Rises Must Converge," or "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the new reader feels an existential hollowness reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger; O'Connor's imagination appears a barren, godless plane of meaninglessness, punctuated by pockets of random, mindless cruelty.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Scarlet Letter”. American Literature: Volume One. Ed. William E. Cain. New York: Pearson, 2004. 809-813. Print