Claudius purposefully set out to murder his own flesh and blood, which proves his selfishness, similar to the biblical reference of the serpent. The ghost goes on to say, “With witchcraft of his wits, with traitorous gifts… So to seduce! -- won to his shameful lust.” This further emphasizes the reference to Adam and Eve because Claudius acted as the serpent that tempted Eve with the poisonous fruits in the Garden of Eden, the “orchard,” to “win his shameful lust.” By expressing diction to metaphorically relate Claudius to the serpent, it helps align the reader with Hamlet and the Ghost in their contempt for Claudius and the Queen and heightens the reader’s sense of vengeance. Furthermore, in the passage, Shakespeare applies imagery to show Hamlet and the ghost's abhorrence towards Claudius and the Queen's corrupt nature. By presenting Claudius as the unfaithful serpent, it gives readers the connotation that he is evil, betraying and loathsome, correlating to the ghost’s and Hamlet’s feelings.
'Humiliation. In The Scarlett Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne adeptly employs rhetorical devices such as allusion, syntax, metaphor, irony and imagery. He dares to probe the deleterious nature of revenge and the duplicity of character in the Puritan society circa the late 1600’s. The Biblical allusions found in the Scarlet Letter are so great in number to the point of being obvious. First, Hester and Dimmesdale are comparative to Adam and Eve; after committing the infraction, she is cast out of the Puritan community and both are forced to live under the stress of their guilt and work to ease their consciences (Faira 1).
And demandin’ of her how she come to be so stabbed, she testify it were your wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in’” (Miller 71). Spoken by Ezekiel Cheever, a clerk of the court, this dialogue shows that Abigail purposely stabs herself to make it seem as if it were the evil act of Elizabeth’s spirit. When the townsmen search the Proctors’ home, they discover the poppet with a needle poked in it (Abigail’s doing). Elizabeth is arrested, and Abigail is satisfied – for the time being. John Proctor, on the other hand, is outraged because he clearly knows the real motive behind Abigail’s deceitful
They shaved him and his glorious mane. This we can relate to the Bible when Jesus is put on a cross where he was tortured until he finally died. Later Jesus was ressurrected just like Aslan was on the stone table. Another parallel is when Edmund comes into Narnia and is tempted by the White Witch. The White Witch is similar to the devil but the main parallel is how Edmund is tempted with Turkish Delight by The White Witch.
We are immediately faced with a pessimistic representation of human nature in The Tempest in Act 1 Scene 2 through the character of Caliban and his actions in regards to Miranda, the protagonist’s (Prospero) daughter. Prospero alludes to Caliban attempting to rape his daughter as he says "...I have used thee, / Filth as thou art, with human care and lodged thee / In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate /The honour of my child." For Shakespeare to almost open the play with such a savage representation of Caliban allows us to interpret that he is going to explore the extent to which freedom within human nature can often lead to abhorrent actions. However, we must consider that we only have Prospero’s account for the said occurrence and it is evident that Prospero arguably loathes Caliban, Regarding him as a "beast" and a "poisonous slave, and so it’s possible that the things he says about him are not necessarily wholly true. Despite this, we must consider that Prospero and Miranda initially took on the role of caring and educating Caliban in replace of his Mother and Miranda endeavours to scold Caliban for being ungrateful regarding her attempts to educate him in Act 1 Scene 2 - “When thou didst not, savage, / Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like / A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes / With words that made them known.” From this, we can gather that Shakespeare is attempting to argue the futility in humans attempting to help one another through Caliban’s rebellion and failure to adopt a moral stance which is another criticism of human nature.
In Oedipus the King, one trait that makes Oedipus a tragic hero is that he is responsible for his own fate. Oedipus marries his mother, Queen Jocasta, and kills his father, King Lauis. When Oedipus is communicating with the city of Thebes he says, “Not pointed out as wedded to the one who weaned me. Now I am god-abandoned a son of sin and sorrows all incest-sealed with the womb that bore me” (74). Also, when the official who is telling the city of Thebes that Oedipus blinded himself he says, “He shouts for all the barriers to be unbarred and he displayed to all of Thebes, his father’s murderer, his mothers…no, a word too foul to say…”(71).
With the help of Grant, Jefferson goes from being compared to swine to being compared to Christ. To Kill A Mockingbird is a bildungsroman novel in which Scout grows up in a racist community. She learns about judging people from Atticus, her father and the biggest contributor to her maturity. When she says, “Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts” (Lee, 59), Scout shows that Atticus
The Scarlet Letter: The Dangers of Hypocrisy In Matthew 23:13 Jesus cries out, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.” Shortly after that, Jesus says, “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” Since hypocrisy can be found in each and every person in some form or another, scores of authors have used their stories to illustrate the dangers of hypocrisy. Nathaniel Hawthorne chose to display this moral in one of his most famous works. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne works through his characters to reveal the perilous dangers of hypocrisy. Hawthorne displays the hypocrisy in his characters through the first scaffold scene.
Chansol Lim Mr. Dalbey Honors Eng 11 Period 8 November 7, 2012 TSL Essay In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there are three major sinners: Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. Each character commits a different sin. Hester commits adultery with Dimmesdale while Chillingworth, her husband, is absent; Dimmesdale commits the sin of adultery, and compounds it by deceiving others to hide his sin, and Chillingworth plans a hate filled revenge on Dimmesdale. Despite the fact that all three of them commit sins, people from the puritan based society, as described by Hawthorne, regarded Hester as the most sinful person and treated her with disdain. Although the puritan society depicted in The Scarlet Letter
When Hales questions her about witch crafting, she responds saying, “‘He say Mr. Parris must be kill! Mr. Parris no goodly men, Mr. Parris mean man and no gentle man, and he bid me rise out of my bed and cut your throat!’” (848). Since Hale orders her to speak the truth about the devil, Tituba voices out all her hostilities towards her master, and blames that it is suggestions from the devil. At the same time, she can accuse “‘white people’” (848) with the devil. Hale claims that Tituba is “‘selected’” and is “‘chosen to cleanse our village’” (848).