Hawthorne utilizes each different meaning of the scarlet letter to make a commentary on the Puritan society. While many readers view the scarlet letter as simply a mark of adultery, it is really a symbol of Hester’s identity. In the beginning, the scarlet letter obtains a negative connotation. In the prologue of the novel, while exploring the attic of the Custom House, the curator finds the scarlet letter, “my eyes fastened themselves upon the old scarlet letter…certainly, there was some deep meaning in it…as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron” (Hawthorne 31). Even years after Hester Prynne’s death, the scarlet letter continues to have a negative impact on anyone that views it.
In the Dead there are; life and death; Gabriel and Gretta; male and female; past and present; youth and British/European and Irish. A psychoanalytical reading also reveals self-knowledge and self-delusion, and escape and entrapment as oppositional forces tormenting the protagonist. These paired opposites give meaning to and define the other, and are a code to signify the world in which Gabriel inhabits is one he is alienated from, and that alienation is the root cause of his insecurity displayed on multiple occasions throughout the text. Syntagmatically; that being a sequence of events that build the narrative and convey meaning, (Berger 1998; 16) the Dead’s structure is divided into three distinct parts, that arrival, the dinner and the departure. Gabriel is the unifying concept, who links and imbues meaning to these parts through his interactions with other characters.
William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932) is an investigation of the dilemmas of the modern Man. Faulkner examines the psychological as well as the social motives behind humans’ confused identity and weird behavior through the portrayal of his different characters in a constant search for their true selves. Alwayn Berland in his book Light in August: A Study in Black and White states that Faulkner “dealt directly with the largest human dilemma: what gives value and worth to human life? Why, and for what, do human beings strive?what is the nature of virtue? of evil?
It is wrong. Hardy portrays him to be bitter and heartless and therefore he receives no sympathy what so ever. At the end, Farmer Lodge’s character changes, he tries to make up for his previous behaviour and how he ignored his son by setting up a reformatory for boys: “he went away to Port-Bredy, at the other end of the county, living there in solitary lodgings till his death two years later of painless decline.” (Page 33) Hardy uses strong words such as “painless decline” which gives atmosphere about the solitude he lived in. It is clear that Farmer Lodge wants to make up for his previous behaviour by setting up the reformatory and giving a “small annuity” to Rhoda.
Through settings the reader understands that society isolates people who are considered to be different. The first thing that shows us the isolation of the old man is the picture that Hemingway has drawn of the old man's shack. He describes it as: "went through its open door…and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal." (p. 15) Also Hemingway shows that Santiago, the old man, feels his isolation through "Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall, but he had taken it down because it made him to lonely to see it." (p. 16) Everything in the old man's shack gave a feeling of his loneliness and isolation, such as his one bed, one table, one chair, and his wife's picture that he did not stand to look at so he took it down.
Issues in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway revolves around several of the issues that preoccupied the Bloomsbury writers and thinkers as a group. Issues of androgyny, class, madness, and mythology run throughout the novel. While that is hardly an exhaustive list, these notions seem to form the core of the structure of the novel. Woolf herself, when envisioning the project, sought to produce “a study of insanity and suicide, the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side.” This issue of madness, in particular, gives the novel its form as we follow the twinned lives of Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway. These preoccupations, occuring in the biographical and intellectual lives of the disparate members of Bloomsbury, revolved around Virginia framing the preoccupations and concerns of the text.
However, the overwhelming pattern in Chopin’s fiction seems to either satirize or undermine the worlds of her characters. One way in which she does this is through point of view. A look at this technique reveals the genesis of The Awakening in even the earliest of her published fiction dealing with male/female sexual relationsh... ... middle of paper ... ...man Writer in the South: 1859-1936. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1981. Le Marquand, Jane.
This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, both contain their authors’ criticisms of society. This criticism is displayed by the imprisonment of the main characters throughout the novels. This criticism is visible is the authors’ imagery, characterization, and the motif of social standing’s importance. Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise.
Although they seem at ease and friendly on the surface, a deep sense of loneliness lingers in the hearts of Crooks, George, and Curley's wife, to which they are desperate to find an escape from to cope with their seclusion from the rest of society. Crooks, a lively, sharp-witted, black stablehand, who takes his name from his crooked back, leads a lonely life. He lives according to the rule that no black man is allowed to enter a white man's home. Crooks’ loneliness is a result of rejection from everyone else on the ranch. He is forced to live alone in a barn, where he lives his life in isolation because of his colour, which was an issue in those days.
Vice or Virtue in The Scarlet Letter Hawthorn's Novel, The Scarlet Letter, is brimming with many vivid symbols, the most apparent of which is the scarlet letter "A", that Hester Prynne is made to wear upon her chest. Throughout the novel, hawthorn presents the scarlet letter to the reader in a variety of ways. Yet an important question emerges, as the life of Hester Prynne is described, which deals with the affects that both the scarlet letter and Hester have on each other. There is no clear-cut answer to this question, as many examples supporting both arguments can be found throughout the novel. The letter obviously causes Hester much grief, as she is mocked and ostracized by many of the townspeople, yet on the other hand, later in the novel Hester's courage and pride help to change the meaning of scarlet letter in the eyes of both herself and the public.