Scarlet Letter Blogpost 2!

Blogpost #2: Chapters 4-5

In the beginning of chapter four you realize that the baby is actually sentenced to prison with Hester. Somehow, this surprises me. I know it shouldn’t, given how cruel the Puritans are, but it does. A baby, the most innocent and naive creature, being sentence to prison for a sin she didn’t commit. The sin that led to her life. In efforts to help both her and the baby sleep (and to ease their pain) a doctor, Roger Chillingworth subscribes them medicine. Who is this Roger Chillingworth you ask? HER LONG LOST HUSBAND. Talk about a plot twist, huh? Not only did she sleep with a married man, but she is a married woman herself. I wonder if that’s why her punishment is so cruel. I begin to not trust this Roger guy. And what’s to stop him from accidentally giving her and her baby the wrong medication “by accident”, huh? Because of the mystery aspect to the story, I’ve started to question everyone’s role in Hester’s life and their motives. You never know who’s the liar. Anyway, he is going to tell everyone the identity of her lover, but he also wants her to keep his identity a secret. That’s asking for a bit too much, don’t you think? She agrees to do it. What I want to say to Hester is: “Come on, girl! Where is your will power? Stick it to the man!” I wonder if she agrees because she feels guilty about cheating on him. Again, mindset lens is vital in this story. 

In chapter five, Hester is released from prison on the condition that she must wear an “A” on her chest for the rest of her life. The “A” represents sinful passion and frailty, or weakness in morals. On page 76, the narrator go on a sort of rant in which GREAT POINTS are made. How can she still call this place of shame “home”. She is free to go anywhere, yet she choses to stay because it is her home. Where people will continue to talk about her and shame her for her ONE wrong doing forever. “But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human being to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it” (pg. 76-77). I think this quote can be related to our society today. Magazines like People and OK! actually get paid to leak rumors (or personal events) of well-known humans. The darker and sadder the events are, the more magazines that sells. And we, as consumers, buy it! I’m guilty of it, too.  I mean, I remember when Tiger Woods cheated on his wife and that’s ALL I heard about for a long time. Or the big RPattz and Kristen Stewart affair. People like to read about other’s tragedies or misfortunes or scandals. It’s a fact. But, what does that say about us, as human beings?