下载本文档
版权说明:本文档由用户提供并上传,收益归属内容提供方,若内容存在侵权,请进行举报或认领
文档简介
1、The Scarlet Letter is rich with symbols which can stand for an idea, belief, action, or material entity. It is a characteristic of Hawthorne. He used symbols to reveal the psychology of the characters. So in the essay, I will mainly talk about the symbols in this book.The most important symbol in th
2、e book is the “the scarlet letter A”. When I first saw the main character Hester Prynne at the beginning of the book, the image come to my mind was the woman appeared in the bible, the angle “took me away in the Spirit into a waste land: and I saw a woman seated on a bright red beast, full of evil n
3、ames, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was clothed in purple and bright red, with ornaments of gold and stones of great price and jewels; and in her hand were a gold cup full of evil things and her unclean desires”(revelution 17:3, 17:4). Here the woman “full of evils” was dressed in
4、red, and seated on red. Red, or scarlet color was a kind of symbol of sin.The “scarlet” in this novel, however, can reflect much, not only sin.The color “scarlet” is just like the love between Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale, pure, sincere and enthusiastic. This kind of love is the foundation of the fa
5、mily and the society. It should be cherished if the society is well established. But, the novel was written in the mid-nineteenth century and took the mid-seventeenth century for the events it describes. People at that time sought to establish an ideal community in America that could act as a model
6、of influence for what they saw as a corrupt civil and religious order. This sense of mission was the center of their religious and social identity. Directed toward the realization of such an ideal, the Puritans required a strict moral regulation; anyone in the community who sinned threatened not onl
7、y their soul, but the very possibility of civil and religious perfection in America and in England. Not coincidentally, the years Hawthorne chose to represent in The Scarlet Letter were the same as those of the English Civil War fought between King Charles I and the Puritan Parliament; the latter wa
8、s naturally supported by the New England colonists. Under the rule of the Puritanism, the human nature had been constrained; people can not develop in a healthy way. The scarlet feeling that should be full of passion and happiness was suppressed. Meanwhile, the “scarlet” can also stand for the punis
9、hment of stake. Hester and Dimmesdale were just like pagans; their guilty souls were burned by the fire, and the fire had turned into the scarlet letter “A”. That meant their souls were purified in the long lasted punishment. As the novel described that Hester was a young woman who was tall with a f
10、igure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. S
11、he was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication. There is no doubt that she was a charming woman, especially in th
12、e common crowd. But the scene was quite irony. This charming woman was the sinner. The scarlet letter A was on the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread. She was a sinner who committed adultery more than an attractive woma
13、n. The scarlet letter A people gave her was to show she was an adulterous woman. It was a shame; As A is the first letter of the alphabet which means the start. As to doctrine, the start is fallen. The origin of the world is fallen. Adam and Eves leaving Eden was a punishment for their act. Life beg
14、inning was a kind of fallen. The story begins with the scene that Hester was on the scaffold to accept the punishment implied that the beginning was the fallen. The name of Arthur Dimmesdale started with the letter A just liked Adam. He should be together with Hester, but he did not. For Hester, she
15、 hadnt been faced with this, so whats her first impulse is to clasp the infant closely to her bosom to hide this shame. But in a moment, she realized its unwise to hide a shame by another. Then she smiled, in a haughty way. At this moment, the scarlet letter A was no longer a kind of symbol of “adul
16、terous”, a shame, but the fire inside that gave her the support together with the baby on her arm. She pulled through this situation and in her later life the scarlet A also accomplished her and turned into different meanings. It just like a ferule that regularize her behavior, cultivate her virtue,
17、 constrained her human nature and also firmed her faith to pursuit her happiness. In her latter life, she lived a pure life. Her needle work was supremely good that the scarlet letter A seemed to become a praise that represented art. Not only had her needle work winned her praise, but she herself wa
18、s such a kind person who always helped others who were in trouble that wined others respect. The scarlet letter A became a symbol of “able” or “angle”. It could be also regarded as the cross of nuns, stranded for “Acts of the apostles”. Till this moment, the scarlet letter A was no longer a symbol o
19、f shame. Whats interesting, in Geoffrey Chaucers The Canterbury Tales, there also a nun who had an A. The scarlet letter itself is the principal symbols in the novel, and there are many others. In the first chapter the wild rosebush symbolizes dissent in its reference to the historical figure Anne H
20、utchinson, who led a group of religious dissenters in colonial Massachusetts. Meanwhile it also symbolizes Hester and even a foreshadowing of the scarlet letter that she wears. Whats more, individuals in the novel can also be understood as symbols. For instance, Arthur Dimmesdale, with all of his pr
21、ofound pain and suffering, is symbolic of the high value of truth and the irony of its unattainability. In others eyes, there would “never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spoke this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through his.” Such a high praised priest, however, was not as perfect as they thought. Dimmesdale i
温馨提示
- 1. 本站所有资源如无特殊说明,都需要本地电脑安装OFFICE2007和PDF阅读器。图纸软件为CAD,CAXA,PROE,UG,SolidWorks等.压缩文件请下载最新的WinRAR软件解压。
- 2. 本站的文档不包含任何第三方提供的附件图纸等,如果需要附件,请联系上传者。文件的所有权益归上传用户所有。
- 3. 本站RAR压缩包中若带图纸,网页内容里面会有图纸预览,若没有图纸预览就没有图纸。
- 4. 未经权益所有人同意不得将文件中的内容挪作商业或盈利用途。
- 5. 人人文库网仅提供信息存储空间,仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理,对用户上传分享的文档内容本身不做任何修改或编辑,并不能对任何下载内容负责。
- 6. 下载文件中如有侵权或不适当内容,请与我们联系,我们立即纠正。
- 7. 本站不保证下载资源的准确性、安全性和完整性, 同时也不承担用户因使用这些下载资源对自己和他人造成任何形式的伤害或损失。
最新文档
- 善待地球,我们别无选择作文1100字(全文)
- 中考英语复习第28讲 读写综合(课件)
- 环境保护措施
- 单光子激光雷达行业数据:2023年全球市场规模约为211.73百万美元
- 押广东广州卷第22-23题(几何图形中的尺规作图求证、圆的综合)(解析版)-备战2024年中考数学
- 介绍新能源汽车课件
- 基于DSP的两相混合式步进电机细分控制及转矩矢量控制
- 印染废水处理方法研究进展
- 工作方案范文模板
- 礼宾常识-什么是 外交团
- 某地10KV市电工程改造标书模板(商务、技术)
- 国家开放大学电大《管理学基础》机考终结性9套真题题库及答案
- 反渗透膜技术标书
- 2022义务教育小学科学课程标准(2022版)解读(面向核心素养的科学教育)
- 检验记录模板:沥青试验报告
- DB50∕T 178-2004 杂交水稻品种 西农优1号
- 物业服务企业五年规划指引课件
- 火电厂工艺流程
- 现代舞基训教案
- 通力电梯KCE电气系统学习指南
- 小学音乐课件-第四单元-我的家在日喀则-人教版-(共14张PPT)ppt课件
评论
0/150
提交评论