...Puritan Culture in “The Scarlet Letter” Starting in the sixteenth century, Puritan culture and life was very religion based, as it was shown in “The Scarlet Letter”. The Puritans believed in free will and predestination, in which God would determine who is to be damned. But at the same time, they believed that the human will may be renewed if they can correct their wrongdoings to conform back to the true standard of righteousness. The Puritans were known for wanting to “purify” the church. Anyone who did not go to their church or have the same beliefs was to leave their community. They were very harsh with their principles, and anyone that did not follow the normal Puritan lifestyle strictly was disapproved of and disciplined, as Hester was in “The Scarlet Letter”. Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays this Puritan view through the characters’ attitudes and justification of their own and other’s sin, hypocrisy, and views on human nature....
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...At the turn of the 17th century, a new group of settlers arrived in America, resolving to establish a “city upon a hill” that would be the focal point for God’s grace in the New World and would serve as a model for the waves of pilgrims to come. In subsequent decades, the Puritans formed communities across New England; communities governed by and revolving around a strict interpretation of the Christian religion. Essentially, Puritan society was controlled and influenced by the relationship between sin and consequent punishment. Inevitably, this led to conflict over the actual definition of “sin” and if certain acts of “sin” are more severe than others. During the 18th century, the perpetual oppression of the Puritan lifestyle led to major regime changes across the New World as settlers strayed away from the harsh reality of Puritan ideals....
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...Blake Hughes Ms. Tolle English III-2 8 November 2011 Reactions Negative reactions to inauspicious events can pile up on the situation to make matters worse. Eventually there will be a large web of causes and effects as a result of one poor reaction to a single event. Such a situation occurs in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a book about a Puritan reaction to adultery. In the novel, the adultery of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale causes Roger Chillingworth, who is the betrayed husband, to react negatively to the events outside of his control, showing that Chillingworth has been removed from his role as the important male figure in his marriage to Hester. Dimmesdale, who is the minister, removes Roger from his legal role as a dominant male figure in Hester’s life by first sleeping with Hester and, later, by continuing the relationship despite Chillingworth’s disapproval. The two culprits of the adultery are Hester Prynne, the unfaithful wife, and Arthur Dimmesdale, the Puritan minister of the community. Hester and Roger are married, but that does not mean that they are in love. They are together because it is against the Puritan lifestyle for a man to go unmarried, so Roger takes Hester to be his wife. Since the women of this time have little say in what happened, Hester and Roger marry. Arthur is the man that Hester is in love with, and she shows the proof of that fact through their adultery and having Pearl Prynne. They are so in love, they want to move...
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...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...
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...Section #1: The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, starts off by introducing how the book was written. The anonymous narrator stumbled upon some manuscripts labeled with a red “A”, all of which happened some 200 years before his time. He decided to write a fictional story about the facts he found in the manuscripts and thus, The Scarlet Letter was born. The story begins in a Boston Puritan Settlement in the 17th century. Hester Prynne and her young daughter, Pearl, are being led from the town prison, bearing the infamous “scarlet letter”. A man in the crowd said she was being tried for adultery, after her husband left and was supposed to be “lost at sea”, and gave birth to a child. She will not, however, give the identity of her lover, and the red “A”, along with her public shame, is punishment for her sin and secrecy. The man in the crowd turns out to be Hester’s long lost husband, who is now practicing medicine and is going by the name Roger Chillingworth. Several years pass and, being banished by the town, Hester and Pearl live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. The town repeatedly tries to take Pearl away from Hester, but with the help of the young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, the two manage to stay together. Chillingworth has his suspicions about Dimmesdale’s health and the fact he may be hiding a secret, so he decided to move in with him to give him constant care. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark on the man’s chest...
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...In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne explored the superficially-Christian ideals of Boston's Puritan society by revealing the sins committed by many individuals in the community. In this novel, Hester Prynne was an obvious sinner, forced by the community to forever harbor the scarlet letter on her chest as a reminder of her sin. Roger Chillingworth could also be considered a sinner for lying about his identity and mentally torturing his patient, Arthur Dimmesdale. However, one would be surprised to find that the worst sinner in this novel was one of the most pious men in the community. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale was the most sinful in this novel, because he committed adultery with Hester, lived a hypocritical life, and doubted God's ability...
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...Subtitle In Chapters IX and XV from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, its plot is developed around the characters of Hester Prynne, Pearl, Roger Chillingworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale. At the beginning of chapter IX: The Leech, takes place when Chillingworth was wondering on the outskirts of a crowd exactly on the day Hester was set up in front of the pillory. He did not want anyone to know who he was so placed his finger to his lip so Hester would not reveal his identity. Later, Chillingworth tells Hester he forgives her but makes her promise to not reveal who he is and swears he will find out Pearl’s real father. Chillingworth builds a new identity as a doctor in where he picks Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale as his spiritual guide and reveals great concern for his health but Mr. Dimmesdale seems to refuse Chillingworth offer of care. In Chapter XV: Hester and Pearl, Hester admits to herself that she hates her husband, it was all a self-delusion. Pearl’s curiosity about the letter A on her chest grows, and would not drop the subject regardless. Pearl is an intelligent child so she questions her mother about the connection between the scarlet letter and the minister’s hand always over his heart. However, Hester feels ashamed and refuses to answer Pearl’s suspicion since she thinks Pearl is too young to understand the situation. One of the evident relationships is between Roger Chillingworth and Reverend Dimmesdale. Chillingworth settles in a Puritan town under the disguise in helping...
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...centuries ago, have written entire plays based upon the respectable and illicit relationships between men and women. Infidelity alone is talked about in over one-hundred and sixty six verses in the Bible while marriage is mentioned one-hundred and seventy seven times. The fact of the matter is that the bonds between men and women are interesting, complex, and scandalous many times. It’s for this very reason we have entire magazines dedicated to following the social lives and relationships of famous people. Three works of literature in particular shed light upon the development and consequences of these illicit relationships. These three works are Fortunata and Jacinta by Benito Perez Galdós, Adolphe by Benjamin Constant, and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each of these books contains similar and distinct, relationship development, main characters, characterization of classes, environment depiction, and resolutions. Fortunata and Jacinta was written by Benito Galdós in 1887. Galdós, born on the Canary Islands and living in Madrid during the time he wrote this book, was a member of the middle class. The book was criticized by political and religious leaders for its critique of the middle class and revealing sexuality. It was, however, venerated by his peers for its realistic depiction of life among all classes during the time period. This story,...
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...Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter during the 1800s in Boston, Massachusetts when men were the dominant gender in society. The whole book is based on how Puritan society always chose men over women. They would punish women constantly and without any hesitation. In this book, Hawthorne writes about Hester who had an affair but had also recently gave birth to a child. Throughout the book we tend to see how there were many punishments towards women. Hawthorne lets us know that he is not on the same side as all of these Puritans because he thinks that women do need to have rights and should be able to be independent. While Puritans wanted women to be pure and always be in the house hold, in this book we realize that if you made a...
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...factories. The colonists of the Chesapeake Bay region, on the other hand, led harder lives compared to that of the colonists of New England. The Chesapeake Bay had an unhealthy environment, bad eating diets, and intolerable labor. The colonists had different reasons for settling in these two distinct regions. The New England region was a more religiously strict yet diverse area compared to that of the Chesapeake Bay. The development of religion in the two regions came from separate roots. After Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic Church broke away from each other, a new group of English reformers was created called the Puritans. The Puritans came from protestant backgrounds, after being influenced by Calvinistic ideas. When their reforms were thwarted by King James I of England, they fled to the New World in what is now known as the "Great Migration". The Puritans were then joined by Quakers, Protestants, and Catholics in the religiously diverse New England area. These diverse religious factions were allowed to live freely but under the laws of New England. It was due to this religious freedom that these people came to escape religious persecution back home. The New Englanders had a religion-based society and religion was based on family. As the...
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...precisely in the USA, it would automatically be given this epithet. But it should be taken into account that this idea is quite broad and doesn’t reflect the real essence of the term. However, there is also another definition that gathers this essence: American Literature is the one that represents the Americanism, the singularity of the USA philosophy and culture. This way, instead of focusing on who the author is, it is focused on the content of the writing. In that which concerns Fiction, the following documents are the ones considered as narrative: Speeches Letters Short Stories Essays Political Documents Sermons Novels Diaries 1 FIRST LITERARY EXPRESSIONS The first documents in which the idea of Americanism is very present are the Sermons. They respond to the strict Protestantism settled in the New Continent after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans in the Mayflower (1620) and the Arabella (1630). They established a theocratic community whose main and only point of reference was the Bible. That is why the idea of the ‘city upon a hill’ is still very present in American mentality. As we all know, their community was also governed by the concept of Predestination. This belief was based in the idea that we are saved or condemned since the very moment we are born or even, since the very moment when the Universe was created. Therefore, the way they confronted Good and Evil was that of...
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...biblical Church Discipline 1 Mark Dever Mark Dever is pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. A graduate of Cambridge Universit y, Cambridge, England, he is the author of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church and a recent book on Richard Sibbes. He is a contributing editor to The Founders Journal. Emily Sullivan Oakey was born, educated, and then taught in Albany, New York. As with many other women of the mid-nineteenth century, she spent a good bit of time writing down her thoughts—sometimes as part of a journal, other times as part of articles, very often in poetry. She published many of her articles and poems in daily newspapers and in magazines. As a young woman of twenty-one, perhaps inspired by Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, she wrote a poem about sowing and harvesting. Some twenty-five years later, in 1875, the poem was set to music by Philip Bliss and appeared in print for the first time under the title “What Shall the Harvest Be?”2 The little group of Christians who formed what would become Capitol Hill Baptist Church selected that very song as the first song to be sung in their meetings together, in February of 1878: Sowing the seed by the daylight fair, Sowing the seed by the noonday glare, Sowing the seed by the fading light, Sowing the seed in the solemn night. O, what shall the harvest be? O, what shall the harvest be? Very appropriate words to ring off the bare walls and bare floorboards of the building they met...
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...THE MAYAN MISSION Another Mission. Another Country. Another Action-Packed Adventure. 1,000 New *SAT Vocabulary Words Karen B. Chapman THE MAYAN MISSION THE MAYAN MISSION Another Mission. Another Country. Another Action-Packed Adventure. 1,000 New *SAT Vocabulary Words Karen B. Chapman Copyright © 2006 by Karen B. Chapman. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, 317-572-3447, fax 317-572-4355, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, and related trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates. *SAT is a registered trademark of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product...
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...critical theory today critical theory today A Us e r - F r i e n d l y G u i d e S E C O N D E D I T I O N L O I S T Y S O N New York London Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2006 by Lois Tyson Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid‑free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97410‑0 (Softcover) 0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97410‑3 (Softcover) 978‑0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Tyson, Lois, 1950‑ Critical theory today : a user‑friendly guide / Lois Tyson.‑‑ 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0‑415‑97409‑7 (hb) ‑‑ ISBN 0‑415‑97410‑0 (pb) 1. Criticism...
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...CONTE NTS Introduction 1 WHY YOU SHOULD VISIT CEMETERIES: Survivorship Bias 2 DOES HARVARD MAKE YOU SMARTER?: Swimmer’s Body Illusion 3 WHY YOU SEE SHAPES IN THE CLOUDS: Clustering Illusion 4 IF 50 MILLION PEOPLE SAY SOMETHING FOOLISH, IT IS STILL FOOLISH: Social Proof 5 WHY YOU SHOULD FORGET THE PAST: Sunk Cost Fallacy 6 DON’T ACCEPT FREE DRINKS: Reciprocity 7 BEWARE THE ‘SPECIAL CASE’: Confirmation Bias (Part 1) 8 MURDER YOUR DARLINGS: Confirmation Bias (Part 2) 9 DON’T BOW TO AUTHORITY: Authority Bias 10 LEAVE YOUR SUPERMODEL FRIENDS AT HOME: Contrast Effect 11 WHY WE PREFER A WRONG MAP TO NO MAP AT ALL: Availability Bias 12 WHY ‘NO PAIN, NO GAIN’ SHOULD SET ALARM BELLS RINGING: The It’llGet-Worse-Before-It-Gets-Better Fallacy 13 EVEN TRUE STORIES ARE FAIRYTALES: Story Bias 14 WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP A DIARY: Hindsight Bias 15 WHY YOU SYSTEMATICALLY OVERESTIMATE YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND ABILITIES: Overconfidence Effect 16 DON’T TAKE NEWS ANCHORS SERIOUSLY: Chauffeur Knowledge 17 YOU CONTROL LESS THAN YOU THINK: Illusion of Control 18 NEVER PAY YOUR LAWYER BY THE HOUR: Incentive Super-Response Tendency 19 THE DUBIOUS EFFICACY OF DOCTORS, CONSULTANTS AND PSYCHOTHERAPISTS: Regression to Mean 20 NEVER JUDGE A DECISION BY ITS OUTCOME: Outcome Bias 21 LESS IS MORE: The Paradox of Choice 22 YOU LIKE ME, YOU REALLY REALLY LIKE ME: Liking Bias 23 DON’T CLING TO THINGS: Endowment Effect 24 THE INEVITABILITY OF UNLIKELY Events: Coincidence 25 THE CALAMITY OF CONFORMITY: Groupthink 26 WHY...
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