Free College Essays - Response Essay to Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

643 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Critical analysis of scarlet letter

Response to The Scarlet Letter

"Confess thy truth and thou shall have eternal rest." I belive that is the moral to be taught in this novel of inspirational love, yet a novel of much sorrow. The impossible became possible in The Scarlet Letter, a story set back in the Puritan Times. In this response, I will give my reactions in writing to different aspects of the novel;the characchters, my likes and dislikes, my questions, and my opinion of the harsh Puritain lifestyle. Hester Prynne, the Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth each suffered guilt in their own way in the novel The Scarlet Letter. In the beginning of the novel, Hester Prynne should have not suffered the way she did on the scaffold alone. She was forced to be intergated by the high-officials of the town, while holding her little Pearl in arms. Making matters worse, the father of the child was in that very group of officals. She was then sentenced to wear the scarlet letter "A", showing her guilt "externally". Unable to take it off, she was forced to show her guilt to the entire settlement. However, the Reverend Dimmesdale suffered "internally", with a scarlet letter of his own engraved in his mind, and on his chest as well. He felt like he betrayed God, and beat himself in a frenzy to prove his wrongdoing. He often questioned wheather his authority was true or not. Roger Chillingworth suffered the least, because he only failed to reveal the secret that he knew, the father of the child who Hester Prynne was forced to live with. This small restriction to his life forced him to suffer "internally". I had different likes and dislikes in the novel The Scarlet Letter. There were many things that needed to be judged to fit into the given catagories, including; character attitudes, and character decisions. For example, the attitude displayed from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was rather unnapealing to me. There are different ways of settling ones guilt rather than whipping oneself in a closet. The one character whose attitude was appealing to me was that of Pearl's. She showed that mistakes in a relationship often lead to bad situations. Her mischeif and connection to the devil are examples of just those situations. Character decisions played an euqally important role. For example, I thought the descision for Hester not to tell who was the father of Pearl on the scaffold to be very brave, but was wrong.

Show More
Related

  • Dealing With Guilt in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne attempted to expose the varying ways in which different people deal with lingering guilt from sins they have perpetrated. The contrasting characters of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale ideally exemplified the differences in thought and behavior people have for guilt. Although they were both guilty of committing the same crime, these two individuals differed in that one punished themselves with physical and mental torture and the other chose to continue on with their life, devoting it to those less fortunate than they.

    Read More

  • Beowolf, The Art of Courtly Love, and The Wife of Bath and

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    “It was never [Beowulf’s] fortune to be helped in combat by the cutting edge of weapons made in iron. When he wielded a sword, no matter how blooded and hard-edged the blade his hand was too strong, the stroke he dealt would ruin it (lines 2677-2687)”

    Read More

  • Guilt and Shame in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

    1108 Words  | 3 Pages

    Guilt and shame haunt all three of the main characters in The Scarlet Letter, but how they each handle their sin will change their lives forever. Hester Prynne’s guilt is publicly exploited. She has to live with her shame for the rest of her life by wearing a scarlet letter on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, on the other hand, is just as guilty of adultery as Hester, but he allows his guilt to remain a secret. Instead of telling the people of his vile sin, the Reverend allows it to eat away at his rotting soul. The shame of what he has done slowly kills him. The last sinner in this guilty trio is Rodger Chillingworth. This evil man not only hides his true identity as Hester’s husband, but also mentally torments Arthur Dimmesdale. The vile physician offers his ‘help’ to the sickly Reverend, but he gives the exact opposite. Chillingworth inflicts daily, mental tortures upon Arthur Dimmesdale for seven long years, and he enjoys it. Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth are all connected by their sins and shame, but what they do in regards to those sins is what sets them apart from each other.

    Read More

  • Mr. Dimmesdale's Feelings of Guilt and Shame in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "The Scarlet Letter"

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    Guilt, shame, and penitence are just a few of the emotions that are often associated with a great act of sin. Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of a 17th century Puritan community, is true example of this as he was somehow affected by all of these emotions after committing adultery. Due to the seven years of torturous internal struggle that finally resulted in his untimely death, Mr. Dimmesdale is the character who suffered the most throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s ever present guilt and boundless penance cause him an ongoing mental struggle of remorse and his conscience as well as deep physical pain from deprivation and self inflicted wounds. The external influence of the members of his society

    Read More

  • Censorship of Books in School

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    In schools around the nation, many books have been banned from the teaching curriculum. Some of them deserve to be banned due to the explicit content only suited for adults. Some books like the Harry Potter series, The Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Hunger Games. Granted, there are language issues in Catcher and Huckleberry Finn, but that language exists everywhere. The censorship should not be as strict as it is because many great books are being banned that students should be reading in order to gain an understanding on who some great writers were. Some of the banned books should be reconsidered on whether they should be censored or not.

    Read More

  • Morality of Cloning

    1537 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the past, cloning always seemed like a faraway scientific fantasy that could never really happen, but sometimes reality catches up to human ingenuity and people discover that a fictional science is all too real. Such was the fate of cloning when Dolly, a cloned sheep, came into existence during 1997, as Beth Baker explains (Baker 45). In addition to opening the eyes of millions of people, the breakthrough raised many questions about the morality of cloning humans. The greatest moral question is, when considering the pros against the cons, if human cloning is an ethical practice. There are two different types of cloning and both entail completely different processes and both are completely justifiable at the end of the day.

    Read More

  • Animal and Human Cloning: Moral, Ethical, and Regulatory Issues

    2514 Words  | 6 Pages

    Dolly, woolly, innocent, and sweet, strongly contrasts with the severity of the issues that she has raised. Ever since the news surfaced that Dr. Ian Wilmut had succeeded in cloning a sheep, people around the world have been participating in a frenzied debate over the morality of cloning animals, and more importantly human beings. The cloning of animals and humans could help the world in unprecedented ways, but could also give rise to unforeseen problems. It raises moral, ethical, and regulatory issues which must be considered during with the formation of cloning legislation. While I believe animal cloning is useful on a restricted level, I feel that human cloning is unnecessary and I advocate its full prohibition.

    Read More

  • Ethical Ethics Of Cloning

    1782 Words  | 4 Pages

    Even though cloning methods have been in use for an extended period of time, the idea of a clone was never thought to be realistic until recently. For thousands of years, humans have been cloning plants through asexual propagation. This is simply the process of stem cutting or grafting a mammal was performed in Switzerland nearly 20 years after the carrot plant where mice cells were cloned. Later, in 1997, Dolly the sheep’s mammary cells were cloned (Lee). This was a major success for science because it was the first time an adult cell was used in which results in a clone of the previous generation of the plant and is still a method used today. It wasn’t until 1958 when modern cloning began with a carrot and in 1964 when scientist John Gurdon started the beginning of animal cell cloning of toad tadpoles. The first successful clone of embryonic cell. After scientists gained a greater knowledge of the process of cloning, they realized that it could possibly be used to benefit the world. In 2001, the first endangered species, the bull gaur, was cloned, and in...

    Read More

  • Reproductive Cloning Technology

    1788 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cloning has become a major issue in our modern world, from moral, ethical, and religious concerns, to the problem of financial and government support. Human cloning is one of the most controversial topics, and because of this, many of the new important discoveries and beneficial technologies have been overlooked and ignored. Reproductive cloning technology may offer many new possibilities, including hope for endangered species, resources for human organ transplants, and answers to questions concerning cancer, inherited diseases, and aging. The research that led up to the ability to clone mammals started more than a century ago. From frogs to mice to sheep to humans, reproductive cloning promises many possibilities.

    Read More

  • Human Cloning

    1032 Words  | 3 Pages

    In July 2000, Dr. Ian Wilmut, a geneticist of Scotland publicized the cloning of a lamb named Dolly. Out of 277 attempts at fussing cells, only 29 of the fused cells became embryos, on which resulted in one pregnancy, which then became Dolly. The cloning of Dolly was the first successful cloning of a mammal. (Medicine’s Brave New World). The successful cloning of Dolly brought a wild borage of thoughts on whether this would lead to the cloning of humans. Most people would believe that it'd best to keep at experimentation and research of the subject, but there are many factors that need to be considered before delving into this topic. More than 90% of cloning attempts fail to produce a viable offspring that will be strong enough for the fussing of cells to harvest. So, why do people believe that human cloning will soon be a thing of the future? Though the evident fact that new technology will further science along with human life, the chances of human cloning, cloning of any kind for that fact, are still slim. According to the man behind Dol...

    Read More

  • The Ethics Of Human Cloning

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine living in a society where the ideology of human cloning is accepted. Envision being able to practice the procedure of taking a genetically identical copy of a biological entity and copying it to create an exact replica of the same genetic makeup. Today, in the field of genetics and developmental biology, the American Medical Association (AMA) has defined cloning as “the production of genetically identical organisms via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)”. The idea of cloning surfaced in 1997 when Dr. Ian Wilmut, a British scientist, successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly. This turned the scientific world upside-down and was a prodigious success in the advancement of biotechnology. The success of the experiment was the starting point to animal cloning and further progression of cloning in general. In bioethics, the dissimilar notion of human cloning has been a very controversial yet sensitive issue which essentially questions the morals and principles of cloning as well as the merits of Science and Biology. Due to the breakthroughs in science, researchers have made outstanding advancements in biological science; however, the ideology of cloning is still a strong provocative issue. It not only provokes worry on the ethical issues and concerns of the use of biotechnology, but it also promotes the question is contemporary artificial cloning justifiable?

    Read More

  • Dimmesdale's Guilt and Internal Struggle in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mr. Dimmesdale’s greatest fear is that the townspeople will find out about his sin of adultery with Hester Prynne. Mr. Dimmesdale fears that his soul could not take the shame of such a disclosure, as he is an important moral figure in society. However, in not confessing his sin to the public, he suffers through the guilt of his sin, a pain which is exacerbated by the tortures of Roger Chillingworth. Though he consistently chooses guilt over shame, Mr. Dimmesdale goes through a much more painful experience than Hester, who endured the public shame of the scarlet letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s guilt is much more damaging to his soul than any shame that he might have endured.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Cloning

    2026 Words  | 5 Pages

    The concept of cloning has been around since the 1800’s, although, in the field of scientists, it has slowly been evolving into a vigorously debated topic, throughout the last 3 decades. Cloning is essentially defined as the process of artificially reproducing genetically identical organisms. Scientists all around the world, through research, are still learning more about the topic, but the fascinating process officially gained awareness as a result of a 1986 experiment conducted by Ian Wilmut, scientist at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. The project was essentially centred around a sheep referred to as “Dolly” that was cloned in a lab using a frozen mammary cell from another adult sheep. At the time, this was a significant milestone in the field, as all cloning up to this point had been done using embryos, and never actual adult cells. The Dolly experiment served as a catalyst for additional intensive research, which consequently resulted in a myriad of new benefits and uses for cloning. From that point on, we have made many advancements, and currently, in our modern day society, scientists are more capable of putting their research into practice, with the assistance of the constant improvements in technology. The method of cloning has already been implemented as a solution to infertility, and plants and animals can be cloned for the purpose of creating new possible food alternatives. The main benefit of cloning revolves around health, as lives can be saved or prolonged, thanks to a theoretically simple process known as organ transplantation, where for example, the parts from a cloned pig can be used to replace those malfunctioning, in a human. If scientists keep doing research on the topic at the current rate, and conducting e...

    Read More

  • Moral and Social Themes in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, there are many moral and social themes develped throughout the novel.  Each theme is very important to the overall effect of the novel.  In essence, The Scarlet Letter is a story of sin, punishment and the importance of truth. One theme which plays a big role in The Scarlet Letter is that of sin and its effects.  Throughout the novel there were many sins committed by various characters.  The effects of these sins are different in each character and every character was punished in a unique way.  Two characters were perfect examples of this theme in the novel.  Hester Prynne and The Reverend Dimmesdale best demonstrated the theme of the effects of sin.

    Read More

  • Cloning

    738 Words  | 2 Pages

    First, cloning has a long history dating back thousands of years, which has allowed the process of cloning to evolve to more complex organisms. Cloning was first experimented with different plant offspring (“Cloning” n.p.). The cloning process of plants in the past was very simple and only required parts of the plant such as roots, stems, and leaves to be cut and planted, which would grow into an exact copy of the initial plant (“Cloning” n.p.). In the 1950s, scientists were able to successfully clone frogs in a more complex manner by transferring the nucleus from a tadpole cell to a frog egg that had already had its nucleus (“Cloning” n.p.). Scientists later discovered that their cloning procedure was a success when the frog that grew from the egg experimented on had the same genetic makeup as the tadpole that donated a nucleus from one of its cells (“Cloning” n.p.). Dolly the sheep is the product of the first successful cloning of a mammal (“Cloning” n.p.). “In 1997 Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut and his colleagues announced the birth of a clone of an adult mammal” (“Cloning” n.p.). Dolly was created from a cell of a breast gland from an adult sheep was put in an embryo and placed inside a sheep able to give birth (“Cloning” n.p.). Dolly was born looking identical to the shee...

    Read More

More about Free College Essays - Response Essay to Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Open Document