Nathaniel Hawthorne goes into depth about sins that most people don’t want to hear about. During the time period of The Scarlet Letter, adultery was extremely frowned upon, and was punishable by death. Dimmesdale kept the guilt and the pain of what he had done bundled up inside; Hester`s sin was brought to light she stood on a scaffold alone as people watched; Chillingworth was letting his anger and hatred control his very being. Hester along with her baby had nothing else to do, but stand and watch as her lover stood by. As she was tried for the very thing he should be tried for.
He tries to position himself as equal to the gods, which is obviously impossible. In spite of these phrases and the arrogance that both heroes display, Sophocles and Homer show their main characters as puppets of the gods, revealing the polytheistic thoughts of their eras. Achilles´ actions determine the fate of his nation. He knows his fate and he accepts it, “Everyone dies, whether today or fifty years from now”. The Greek warrior does not try to deceive his
Andrew Neely IPHS: Odyssey of West Professor Hawthorne September 21, 2009 With reference to his speeches in Book IX, why do you think Achilles rejects the three envoys? Does his rejection suggest that Achilles has come to have doubts about the heroic life and ethos? Please support your answer with textual evidence. The most powerful warrior in Homer’s Iliad, Achilles has all the necessary arête (skills) that embodies the traditional Greek hero. In ancient Greece, skill in battle was valued over any other quality and it defined the Greek man.
This arrogance leads him to becoming slightly obsessed with retaining his pride and not letting anyone slight his bravado. To uphold his name and pride, he mauls his opponents without remorse, heroically takes on the river Xanthus, and even sacrifices twelve Trojan men at Patrocius’ funeral (Cook, 57). Though finally in the final chapter, Achilles shows his remorseful side when he’s reminded of his father when Priam asks for Hector’s defiled body back (Cook, 48). Achilles encompasses many traits immanent in the culture of his time period, mostly of honor and glory for his name, but he also relinquishes those traits with a forgiving side of remorse and grief, even though it usually ends in intense anguish. On the contrary, Hamlet embraces several of these characteristics in the form of a very different character.
The madness resulting from the incident was the way in which the soldiers handled this. They make jokes about Ted Lavender’s death, and act as if it was in a movie, separated from reality. Next, they burn down a town and kill all the animals still in it. While seeing something like this on the news would be disturbing, through the context of the author’s perspective we can understand why they do this. They are all afraid of dying in shame, as noted when Tim O’Brien says “They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing.
Everyone knows Hester because of the sin she committed and everyone knows her punishment, the letter A on her chest. She of course, does not like all this negative attention because it is affecting her lifestyle and the lifestyle of her child, Pearl. Early in the third chapter a man asks a townsman who Hester is. The townsman replies, “‘You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend, else you would surely have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne, and her evil doings’” (Hawthorne pg. 57).In the market place, people criticize Hester as she emerges from the prison door and makes her way to the scaffold to be publicly condemned.
Laura Dumpson January 2011 Global AP Jackson Per. 7 Aphrodite Aphrodite is the Greek Goddess of beauty, love, and sexuality. Hesiod’s Theogony, it claims Aphrodite was born when Cronus cut off Uranus’ genital and threw them into the sea. From the sea foam (aphros) arose Aphrodite. Gods feared that because of her beauty, jealousy would disrupt the peace among them leading to war.
Spill the blood!” (174,175) Reasoning: No civil person would repeatedly state this phrase. This definitely represents savagery. It shows how bloodthirsty these boys are and then when they recite this while murdering Simon; it makes it even more gruesome. They’re so consumed in all the blood that they don’t even realize they had killed Simon until it is too late. • “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.” (235) Reasoning: This quote that was stated at the end of the book shows the reader and myself that the world of savagery only leads to murder and sorrow.
Comparing Achilles then and him now, I found that he is a complete opposite of himself. Before he is characterized as a hero: fire, rage, red, hurtful. And now he is a man: water, sadness, blue, soft. Not only are there opposites in Achilles but in the mood and tone of the poem as well. In the beginning, when Achilles is the hero, there is a very angry and harsh, almost scary, tone when reading the poem.
Punishment in The Scarlet Letter In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, physical punsihment is nothing compared to how the mind can cause punishment. In the Scarlet Letter, Hester Phynne is isolated by the members of Purtian society and left with her child Pearl, a constent reminder of her sin. Dimmesdale’s choice to not feese up to his sin leaves him with mental punishment that makes him sicker and weaker. Chillingsworth does not receive pain, but he does inflict pain to those around him. The main characters of The Scarlet Letter are left to tourment by themselves, the worst punishment of them all.