- Emotions dominating reason
- Sin and despair
- The outside reflecting the inside
Monday, October 1, 2012
Due Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Choose a quotation from any place in The Scarlet Letter up to Chapter 15 which marks it as Dark Romantic Literature. Post the quotation along with a short explanation about why it is Dark Romantic. Do not post the same quotation as someone else. Possible reasons include:
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"Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud: [. . .] "It is done!" muttered the minister, covering his face with his hands. "The whole town will awake and hurry forth, and find me here!""(Chapter 12)
ReplyDeleteDimmesdale's emotion, because of the guilt, has overwhelm logic, so he scream out loud on the scaffold at the middle of the night. People heard him, but thought of it as witch's cry.
this could also be related to sin and despair. Dimmesdale did something wrong and got consumed with guilt and feels powerless
Delete"Without much effort of his will, or power to retrain himself, he thought in his mind: "It is done!" thought the minister, covering his face and his hands.
Delete"With much effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he whispered: [. . .] "It is done!" muttered the minister, letting his hands hanging there. "The whole town will not awake and hurry forth. They won't ever know"
DeleteIn this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. As not only the disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time together.
ReplyDelete(Chapter 10)
In this quote from Chapter 10, Chillingworth joined Mr.Dimmesdale on being a medical adviser through emotions and lacking reason for such act.
This is not really making decisions through an emotion. It is physician's job to figure the patient's illness and figure out what cause it. It is very logical for a physician to do that.
Delete"Better he had died at once!" said Hester. "Yea, woman, thou said truly!"cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire if his heart blaze out before her eyes. "Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me..." (chapter 14)
ReplyDeleteRoger Chillingworth and Hester Prynn had an angry dispute . Chillingworth is a physician, who supposed to be rational, not letting the emotion take control. But now he is "letting the lurid fire if his heart blaze out." He is emotionaly angry. As the dispute goes on, Chillingworth talks carzily, revealing the sin of jealous and hatred. At the beginning of the story, Chillingworth seems to be very calm (even though when he said he will revenge on Hester), but then now his anger is exploding and he can't compress it rationally.
This resembles irrational emotions and actions. The angry dispute relates to irrational arguments over something such as jealousy.
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ReplyDelete"God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her in requital of all things else which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness--she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me, too!" (Chapter 8)
ReplyDeleteShe speaks from love of her child Pearl. She is not thinking rationally based upon her previous encounters with Pearl. She regards Pearl as being the child of the devil and finds her to be strange. Hester is ostracized as an outcast, but still she insists on keeping Pearl. She is acting irrationally despite all of these shortcomings because she loves her daughter.
"This is my child" she said. "Who gave you the authority to take away my child? If you say God, I say that he gave me this child thus this child belongs to me." Hester remained calm and unyielding, not letting them take away Pearl.
Delete"The emotions of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old Roger Chillingworth, threw a dark light on Hester’s state of mind, revealing much that she might not otherwise have acknowledged to herself." (Chapter 15)
ReplyDeleteShe was hit by a small time of un-felt emotions and stared at Roger Chillingworth. Hester's mind was struck by an uncommon sense that she should not have felt or noticed otherwise.
"It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off the badge," calmly replied Hester. "Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different purport."
ReplyDeleteThis quote shows a profound side in Hester not seen commonly in this story.
How does this relate to Dark Romanticism?
Delete"It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him. It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their life. "
ReplyDeleteThis shows the sin and despair within Dimmesdale. He feels hopeless towards all things, especially the burden buried within him
"His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be relied on of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself."
ReplyDeleteThis shows that it is Dark Romantic, because the outside reflects what the inside is like. For example, the quote is referring to Chillingworth, and he's a very sinful and bitter man. His outside appearance reflects his inside.