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Moral Law Vs Natural Law In The Scarlet Letter

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Moral Law Vs. Natural Law "At the dramatic center of The Scarlet Letter is the idea of the awesomeness and inescapability of the Moral Law, to which all else is finally submitted,"� (Levy 384). Assuming that Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter exploring the relationship between Moral law and Natural law, he chooses the moral laws to be absolute. Using definitions of nature and character provided by Seymour Katz applied to the terms natural law and moral law allow an extension of Leo Levy's claim that Moral laws are supreme. Moral law is an internalization of normalizing aspects of society it, "is acquired in time through nurture, education, and social experience. The older the individual the more fixed and stable is his character, and the …show more content…

This device serves as the deterrent for criminals where they are displayed for the public's entertainment. "In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of the penal machine"¦but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France"�, (41). The scaffold punishes people for crimes committed violating the moral laws by exposing the perpetrator to public ignominy. The true nature of Chillingworth's character is revealed while Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl are performing a midnight vigil on the scaffold. "To his features, as to all other objects the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked upon his victim"�, (107). This revelation occurs at the pinnacle of the puritan penal system, the enforcing agent of all moral laws. Even though the "meteoric light"� might be interpreted as an act of nature, this is not the case. It comes from the heavens where the puritan society acquires the religious justification to carry out their laws. Thus the moral law is responsible for providing the truth to the reader in this instance. Another symbol coming from the forest are the Indians. They live in the forest and only periodically come under the jurisdiction of moral laws by entering a city

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