Puritan Perspective and Literary Techniques in The Scarlet Letter

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Puritan Perspective and Literary Techniques in
The Scarlet Letter
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Puritan Beliefs

• Theocracy religious and political law are the
  same
• Predestination God has predetermined who is
  saved and who is damned
• God has a plan for all humankind. Good will
  prevail over evil, and Christ will defeat Satan.
• Goals cleanse society of corrupt, sinful
  actions/vices and experience conversion to lead
  a righteous life

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Predestination

• Innate depravity humans are innately sinful
  (original sin)
• Unconditional election Salvation in reserved
  for those chosen by God
• Irresistible Grace Good works do not save an
  individual. An elect group of saints possess
  Gods saving grace

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Questions to Explore

• Why did followers of Puritanism accept this
  doctrine?
• Need for order, certainty, spiritual security
• Effects on Puritan lives?
• Committed to shaping society and government into
  what God would desire
• Strove to live godly livesdisciplined, sin-free
• Living a righteous life was the EFFECT of being
  one of Gods chosen
• To ensure salvation (not to gain or earn),
  Puritans attempted to display signs of purity as
  evidence of Gods saving grace.
• How does Hawthorne challenge Puritan beliefs?

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Literary Devices

• Descriptive Details
• Imagery
• Irony
• Characterization
• Figurative Language
• Allusion
• Symbols

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Diction

• Word patterns and individual words vocabulary
  and its degree of difficulty, complexity,
  abstractness, etc.
• The wretched minister! (202)
• Hester must take up again the burden of her
  ignominy, and the minister the hollow mockery of
  his good name! (179)
• Imagery descriptive language and figures of
  speech used to convey abstract ideas in vivid,
  innovative ways

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Point of View

• Omniscient able to recount the action thoroughly
  and reliably, and able to enter the mind of any
  character at any time can conceal as well as
  reveal at will.
• Direct address
• Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor
  girl and thrown her into the pathway of this
  solely tempted, or shall we not rather
  say?-this lost and desperate man (200).
• we blush to tell it (201).

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Paradox

• A statement that seems self-contradictory or
  nonsensical on the surface, but may be seen to
  contain an underlying truth.
• Dimmesdales attempt at categorizing himself as a
  sinner, and the peoples reverent response

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Allusion

• An indirect reference to a person, event,
  statement or theme found in literature, the other
  arts, history, mythology, religion or popular
  culture
• Another man had returned out of the forest a
  wiser one with a knowledge of hidden mysteries
  which the simplicity of the former never could
  have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!
  (203)

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Symbols

• Something that, although of interest in its own
  right, stands for or suggests something larger
  and more complex
• The Scaffold
• Roger Chillingworth
• Pearl
• The Scarlet Letter
• The Forest
• The Brook

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Themes

• Consider questions, rather than answers
• Psychological novel What aspects of human
  nature does Hawthorne focus on? What do we learn
  or observe about those aspects?

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