The Scarlet Letter
By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter has four main characters, Hester Prynne, the woman accused of Adultery, Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband from Amsterdam. They are still married and no one knows that they are. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the man who Hester committed the crime with, and Pearl.
The story takes place in Boston, where Hester is accused of adultery and has to wear the letter A on her chest. Hester receives her punishment on a Scaffold. The Reverend Dimmesdale asked Hester who the other person was that helped her commit the act of adultery with her. Hester doesn’t reply. As Hester is on the Scaffold, she is holding her child, Pearl. After a while they leave Hester on the Scaffold in the hot sun for more than one hour as part of her punishment. Then they took her to jail where she stayed for more than a year. While Hester and Pearl are there, Chillingworth comes into the picture and pretends that he is a doctor and goes to take care of the women and the child. There, Hester and Chillingworth talk about what happened, and asks her who is the father of this child? Hester would not tell the identity of Pearl’s father. When Hester doesn’t say, Chillingworth makes her promise that she will not tell that he is her long last husband. Hester says yes, but Chillingworth tells Hester that he will stay and he will find out the name of Pearl’s father. Then he leaves Hester and Pearl.
One year later, Hester was released from jail. Hester cannot live in town because of what happened, the town people think that Hester is evil. They don’t want her there; they use Hester as an example of what happens when a person commits a sin in the Puritan life. So now Hester lives in the country where she makes cloths in order to make a living for herself. She shows off the wonderful clothing for Pearl. Pearl, at the moment, is the only friend Hester has.
Later in the story, Hester goes to take a pair of gloves, which she made, to the governor. She sees the governor outside of the house; he is with Mr. Wilson, Arthur Dimmesdale, and old Roger Chillingworth. When they see her and Pearl, Pearl starts to act up. They walk up to them and say that they are going to take Pearl away from Hester, and make her go to church every morning.
Although some critics may say Hester understood her sin, her love for Pearl and Dimmesdale keep her from this. Hester takes Pearl with her to the Governor’s mansion to demand she keep guardianship of Pearl, “the mother herself...lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between the object of her affection, and the emblem of her guilt and torture” (Hawthorne 59). Hester has dressed Pearl up in scarlet as an act of rebellion out of pride. Hester has pride in Pearl and for this reason is blindsided to her sin. Though her reason for staying in the Puritan community over leaving was suffering punishment and repentance, this act of defyment is contradictory showing she is simply proud of Pearl and does not care for repentance. After Hester makes the decision with Dimmesdale to leave their community, Hester casts away her scarlet letter, Pearl brings Hester
Pearl may be Hester’s only hope of a “successful” life after she is convicted of adultery. "' I will not lose the child! '" Pearl says, "'…thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they are, when that mot...
Hester at first felt that her sin had taken away everything that she had and left her with only one thing, Pearl. When she first walked out of the prison and onto the scaffold, she was full of pride but from that point on, she was isolated from her community and forced to live in the forest with only her baby. Hester felt that suicide was the only thing she deserved after committing adultery. She says, "I have thought of death, have wished for it?would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for anything. Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! it is even now at my lips." As time passes by, Hester?s personality gradually changes and she becomes a completely different person. She has become more caring although her lifestyle became worse.
As a living reminder of Hester’s extreme sin, Pearl is her constant companion. From the beginning Pearl has always been considered as an evil child. For Hester to take care of such a demanding child, put lots of stress onto her life. Hester at times was in a state of uncontrollable pressure. “Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan, ‘O Father in heaven- if Thou art still my Father- what is this being which I have brought into the world!’” (Hawthorne, 77).
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA is a statute endorsed by the U.S. Congress in 1996. It offers protections for many American workers which improves portability and continuity of health insurance coverage. The seven titles of the final law are Title I - Health care Access , Portability, Title II - Preventing Health Care Fraud and Abuse; administrative simplification; Medical Liability Reform; Title III – Tax-related Health Provisions; Title IV – Application and Enforcement of Group Health Plan Requirements; Title V – Revenue Offsets; Title XI – General Provisions, Peer Review, Administrative Simplification; Title XXVII – Assuring Portability, Availability and Renewability of Health Insurance Coverage. (Krager & Krager, 2008)
Previously, healthcare information has been protected by state law. However, since this information crosses state lines, the need for federal protection has been warranted. In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). HIPAA provides the first federal protection for the privacy of medical records (Burke & Weill, 2005) HIPPA encourages the use of electronic medical record and the sharing of medical records between healthcare providers, because it can aid in saving lives. HIPAA requires that patients have some knowledge of the use of their medical records and must be notified in writing of their providers' privacy policy. HIPAA has technical requirements which a healthcare provider, insurer, or service provider, unless exempt under state law, must provide. An organization must conduct a self evaluation to learn what threats its records face, and develop techniques needed to protect the information (HIPAA, 1996). HIPAA's purpose is to protect the privacy of the consumers.
He had previously been Hester Prynne’s husband. He had changed his name for the purpose of living in peace, without being associated with this woman and her crimes and wrongdoings. This man also planned to find revenge on her lover. The scene that portrays this is when Hester and baby Pearl are in jail. Hester is acting insane and the baby is feeling pain. The jailer does not know what to do in order to put this to an end. Roger Chillingworth is the best doctor around, so he tries to help, despite Hester’s betrayal of him. To Hester’s surprise, Chillingworth apologizes for marrying her. He expected her to fall in love with him even though he was much older than her and she was so beautiful. Afterwards, Chillingworth made a vow that he would find the father of the baby. Hester promises to not tell anyone that Chillingworth is the man that was once her husband and the man that she deceived. Chillingworth asked this of her because he did not want to be shamed. If nobody knew who Chillingworth actually was, he could get better revenge on her adulterer. This is a crucial scene because it demonstrates how strongly Chillingworth feels towards Pearl’s father and vividly displays Chillingworth’s yearning to seek revenge on her
The Scarlet Letter is a novel revolving around a woman who committed the sin of adultery in a small Puritan town in seventeenth-century Boston. Hester Prynne, the adulteress, refuses to reveal her lover’s name, and as a result is forced to wear a large, red "A" on her bosom. This is to tell everyone of her sin. Hester is also forced to live isolated with her daughter, Pearl, who is the result of her sin. Meanwhile, the small Puritan town remains very devoted to and very proud of their young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. What they do not know is that it is Dimmesdale who is Hester’s Lover and Pearl’s father. The fact that Dimmesdale keeps his sin a secret is tearing him up, both physically and emotionally. To complicate matters even more, Hester’s old and slightly deformed husband is back. He had stayed in England for quite a while allowing Hester to settle into their new home.
In the beginning of the story, Pearl is a young infant who symbolizes the goodness of her mother’s sinful act of adultery. Although she is the outcome of her mother’s sin, Pearl does not let it define her. When Hester is first determined in the story she is put in front of everyone in the market-place for public shaming. The author states, “she bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old … acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon” (Hawthorne 95). This quote shows that Pearl has only been in a dreary environment since she was born. Her mother’s sin has deprived Pearl of a normal life with sunshine and familial love. Stade expla...
Hester is a youthful, beautiful, proud woman who has committed an awful sin and a scandal that changes her life in a major way. She commits adultery with a man known as Arthur Dimmesdale, leader of the local Puritan church and Hester’s minister. The adultery committed results in a baby girl named Pearl. This child she clutches to her chest is the proof of her sin. This behavior is unacceptable. Hester is sent to prison and then punished. Hester is the only one who gets punished for this horrendous act, because no one knows who the man is that Hester has this scandalous affair with. Hester’s sin is confessed, and she lives with two constant reminders of that sin: the scarlet letter itself, and Pearl, the child conceived with Dimmesdale. Her punishment is that she must stand upon a scaffold receiving public humiliation for several hours each day, wearing the scarlet letter “A” on her chest, represe...
The two of them, after Dimmesdale dies, continue with their plans to go back to England where they hope for a better life. Once in England, the two are able to change their lives around for the better. Pearl is even found to have a family of her own: “Mr. Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later, … Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside” ( Hawthorne 392). Pearl was able to overcome her old life and create a new one, a better one, one that was just for her. Even though her mother was no longer around she tried her best to kept in touch with her. She also kept her and her mother’s experience in mind never to let herself go back to that life. After spending many years in England, Hester finally returns to New England. When she returns she is full of sorrow and regret; however, she continues to wear her A on upon her chest as a reminder of her pain. With returning to the land of sin, people came to Hester, mostly women, with problems of their own. They hope by talking to someone who has been through so much will help them, or give them insight on what life is like to be on the outside: “And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially,—in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion,—or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought,—came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counseled them, as best she might” (Hawthorne 392-393). Even though Hester was miserable and thought that no
How would you like to keep track of your personal health information record in your computer at home? The electronic data exchange was one of the goals of the government to improve the delivery and competence of the U.S. healthcare system. To achieve this plan, the U.S. Congress passed a regulation that will direct its implementation. The Department of Health and Human Services is the branch of the government that was assigned to oversee the HIPAA rules. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 is a national public law in the United States that was created to improve health insurability, prevent insurance abuse and to protect the privacy and security of a person’s health information.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act passed and were signed into law on August 21, 1996. It affects the medical facility and its day to day operations; in many different ways. HIPAA sets higher standard of operation for healthcare workers and the facilities. "HIPAA was instituted to "improve the portability and continuity of health insurance coverage; to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in health insurance and healthcare delivery; to promote the use of medical savings accounts, to improve access to long term care services and coverage; to simplify the administration of health insurance; and to serve other purposes" (Kinn’s, 2011).
While the HIPAA regulations call for the medical industry to reexamine how it protects patient information, the standards put in place by HIPAA do not provide ...
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, is a law designed “to improve portability and continuity of health insurance coverage in the group and individual markets, to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in health insurance and health care delivery, to promote the use of medical savings accounts, to improve access to long-term care services and coverage, to simplify the administration of health insurance, and for other purposes.”1 HIPAA mandates that covered entities must employ technological means to ensure the privacy of sensitive information. This white paper intends to study the requirements put forth by HIPAA by examining what is technically necessary for them to be implemented, the technological feasibility of this, and what commercial, off-the-shelf systems are currently available to implement these requirements.