Topics for final exam

Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses the characteristics prevalent in the Puritan society of 17th Society, Boston which includes relations, religion, public, discipline and punishment. It appeared as if Religion ruled over all, and adultery was considered to be a bad sin in the eyes of everyone. At that time in 17th century Boston, everyone was to follow the rules strictly. Wang, Yueming (2017), Hawthorne depicts through four aspects on Hester’s life, Hester’s rebel, Hawthorne’s own family relationship to advocate feminism in his novel. In this story Hesterprynne, the protagonist of the novel had committed the sin of Adultery, which is the perfect example of the beliefs of that period. The first scene of the novel reflects the burden of values upon society which is evident from the gathering which is there not for an execution but for public punishment to be given to Hester, who has committed the sin of adultery. This scene articulates that public is to be discouraged from committing such type of sin. The community played an important role in punishment. The Scarlet Letter, authored in 1850 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American writer is a work of fiction. It recounts the story of Hesterprynne who has been punished by the strict Puritan society for committing the sin of adultery. The novel reflects the story of her struggle to relive her life along with bringing up her daughter Pearl. The Scarlet Letter is undeniably one of the greatest novels of American literature in which the HESTER a female character with her beauty, intellect and strength comes to the level of heroic proportions. Garrido Sanz, Eva.(2020) As in the 17th century, women are still subjected to judgment for their sexual liberation, while men are praised for doing the same thing. This behavior reproduces the Puritan sexual repression of women seen in The Scarlet Letter through the characters of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, which is displayed in the feminist analysis of the novel. International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews, Vol 4, no 2, pp 1712-1715 February 2023 1713 The story has been written with utmost care and precision and has been united as a whole without any loose ends. Even “The Custom House” section, in the very beginning of the narration, appears to have no connection with the story but on a close reading seems to be woven beautifully with the rest of the novel. It seems as if different chapters look like focusing on a single character, one at a time, but they are unified as a whole because other characters have not been completely neglected. The three scaffold scenes suggest an accord to the narration and the forest scenes shape a significant part of the story. The plot also involves a pattern of emerging action, climax, crisis, descending action and conclusion. Literary devices of irony, ambiguity and symbolism have also been used to provide unity to the novel. The narrator is a nineteenth-century man, quite well-balanced in his perspective, thoughtful and broad-minded but also little ironical. The narrator, as it is informed was once engaged in the custom house of Salem. There, one day, he noticed a packet belonging to one Jonathan Pue. The packet had a red cloth with gold embroidery of the shape of letter ’A’ and many foolscap sheets having details about the life of Hester Prynne. The narrator tells us that he has taken up the main facts of the story from these documents. Thus, it can be said that the nineteenth-century narrator, with a broad-minded mind-set on life, is reproducing the story of seventeenth century characters.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is often considered the greatest American novel—a vast epic that combines deep philosophy and high adventure as well as rich comedy and profound tragedy. MobyDick also offers a particularly diverse array of characters of various types, personalities, and ethnic backgrounds, and its styles are as varied as the people it depicts. Full of humorous dialects and idioms and brimming with probing, impassioned, poetic speeches, Melville’s novel explores the fascinating world of whale-hunting in the mid-nineteenth century, even as it also raises some of the most persistent questions about the purposes and meanings of human life. 7he ¿nal impact of the book—when enraged whale meets pursuing ship—is one of the most memorable episodes in all of American literature. 7he present volume examines Moby-Dick, the novel (references to Moby Dick the whale have no italics and no hyphen), from a variety of points of view. Indeed, a special focus of this volume involves the many different kinds of critical perspectives that can be—and have been—employed when examining Melville’s masterwork. In particular, the present volume emphasizes how the novel was received by many of its earlier readers; the variety of ways in which it can be interpreted by readers today; and a number of the most up-to-date approaches, such as ecocriticism and connections between Melville’s novel and modern art. 7he volume opens with an essay by -oseph &sicsila, author (among much else) of an important book concerning the “canonization” of literary classics in anthologies of American literature. In other words, Csicsila is interested in the ways texts are received and transmitted from one generation to the next, and particularly in the ways some texts become celebrated as masterpieces. In his present essay, he focuses particularly on the “Melville Revival” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, emphasizing how Moby- x Critical Insights Dick went from being a book that had once been largely forgotten (in the decades immediately after it was ¿rst published in ) to being a book that was celebrated, by the 1950s, as perhaps the greatest of all American novels. Csicsila discusses why, how, and by whom this transformation was promoted. 1ext, -onathan D. :right offers a deliberately brief overview of the facts of Melville’s life, concentrating especially on the years before and after the publication of Moby-Dick. Wright suggests some of the ways in which Melville’s early life inÀuenced the kind of author he had become by the time he came to write his greatest novel. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, author of two important booklength studies of Melville’s sources, here adopts a biographical approach that complements the overview offered by Wright. She is particularly concerned with Melville’s experiences as a sailor and with the ways those experiences affected the composition and content of Moby-Dick. 7he essay by Bercaw Edwards is designed to place Moby-Dick within some of its historical contexts. In a chapter intended to offer an example of a comparison/contrast essay, Robert C. Evans and Kelhi D. DePace explore both the similarities and differences between Moby-Dick and -oseph Hart’s novel 0LULDP &RI¿Q. Hart’s book has long been recognized as an important “source” for Melville’s work, and Melville himself acknowledged his familiarity with Hart’s text. However, the resemblances and dissimilarities between the two books have not been as fully explored previously as they are here. DePace provides a very helpful chapter-by-chapter overview of Hart’s lengthy novel, and the essay, in general, especially emphasizes the contrasts between Melville’s harsh, self-centered Captain Ahab and the genial, generous whaling captains Hart depicts. 7he essay also argues that Melville seems, sometimes, to have tried to make his book deliberately different from Hart’s, especially in its depictions of blacks and Native Americans.