P5+TSchow

Begin Text:
Based on my reading of //The Scarlet Letter//, my individual research, and our class discussion, Hawthorne uses the cycle of transgression, shame, repentance, and acceptance as a motif to explore the nation's national identity in government and politics. In the book, the laws are being challenged. There are similar problems today in our government.

During the time in which the book was written, government and politics were religion, and religion was the government and politics; they were one in the same. This created many problems. Take the scaffold scene for example: the government, which consisted of religious leaders, punished Hester for committing adultery by making her wear a scarlet letter on her chest, and then she is placed on the scaffold to be publicly humiliated. Hawthorne describes the scene very well and depicts human flaws precisely. He said, "The scene was not without a mixture of awe such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it" (Ch. 3). In the cycle, transgression is when Hester admits her sin, which is fully seeable (Pearl) and the government induces the shame part of the cycle when they put her on the scaffold.

It is ironic how Hawthorne describes Governor Bellingham in the book, because truthfully Hawthorne does not like how the government is handling things. Bellingham is described by Hawthorne in the book, and Hawthorne says, "He was not ill fitted to be the head and representative a community, which is owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little."