Humanities Literature #2

The Scarlet Letter
by Mariyah Gillis

The wild, uncivilized stories are more captivating than the conventional stories. Conventional literature is often common and everyday events, most likely predictable and similar to real life. Wild, free stories are surprising and predictable. Uncivilized stories act as an escape from ‘everyday’ into another life.

“The scarlet Letter” starts off the story by telling about the prison door in a Puritan town. The lady inside, Hester Prine, was condemned as an adulterer because she gave birth to a child with no proof of a husband. The rest of the town thought she should be put to death in the gallows, or tortured in the dungeon chambers.

This book comes off as a predictable fable about a sinner in the Puritan community; a lady went against the laws in a strict law-abiding town, and therefore should get punished.” The end. In a civilized book, it would probably, most likely, discuss the logistics of how the trial went and the details of the punishment. No surprises, predictable, and pretty much what would go on occasionally in a Puritan town. It would be seen as a common, standard novel of the 1800’s.

But, on the contrary, the uncivilized free and unrestrained thinking in “The Scarlet Letter” is what makes the book a ‘must-read’. Just when you think the story couldn’t get any more outrageous, the baby’s daddy is revealed as the reverend; the town’s religious leader, in charge of the citizens and those who commit a sin. Who would have ever guessed the very man punishing Hester is the one that helped her in her sin to get there?! Yet, the tale continues as a strange traveling physician comes by the town and sees Hester and child, noticing the child didn’t resemble him at all, and takes revenge on the Reverend without letting the know who he really was, “under the appellation of Roger Chillingworth … was hidden another name, which it’s former wearer had resolved should never be spoken of,” Hester’s husband.

Without the startling secrets, revengeful plots, scandalous tricks, undercover truths, and completely uncultivated way of thinking, “The Scarlet Letter” would be a tame, dull, conventional book better not read.