The Importance Of Conformity In The Scarlet Letter

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Throughout history humans have been known for their ability to change, to adapt, and to persevere. Our understanding of what is morally correct allows us to recreate social norms when there are injustices. However, amid struggles are flaws and the scars they leave behind. Humans often choose to glaze over these disfigurements, akin how vines grow over withered houses. Similar to reality, the characters in “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne follow suit. Hester Prynne has committed adultery, a sin in the Puritan community, and is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” as punishment. After years of social outcast, Hester becomes wiser and begins to reject the values of her society while unknowingly encouraging her daughter, Pearl, to do the same. In “The Scarlet Letter,” vegetation is used to convey that pressure to belong does not induce conformity. In “The Scarlet Letter,” …show more content…

As shown in this quote, the Governor attempts to grow beautiful flowers and plants to look at, but the climate is unsuitable. Rather, his garden grows vegetables and sturdy plants. The mayor sees this garden as a shame: “...garden-walk, carpeted with closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening” (p97). Since the garden is not beautiful, it is written off as a disgrace and failure. The garden represents how Hester is written off as useless because she is not represent the face of Puritism the community wants to see. The Puritans refuse to see past their drastic good and bad perspectives. This refusal leads Hester to find use in herself and break the mold the Puritans have

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