Scarlet Letter Quote Analysis

Olaudah Equiano had a very unique experience with the slave trade system. He began conveying his experience with how he was captured in his village by two men and a women, who kidnapped him and his sister. Their captors traveled with them for a few days before separating the siblings, and selling Equiano to his first master. He was treated fairly well, even when he ran away for a day and came back, he says his master “having slightly reprimanded me, ordered me to be taken care of, and not ill-treated.” (Equiano 27) Shortly after this engagement, Equiano’s master loses his wife and child and sends Equiano away to be sold again. He even gets to see his sister one last time before, again, they are separated.

Even though they are mixed, they do not united as one, each of them have their owned destiny that they wanted to fulfill. Among the three races the two most misfortunate were the Negro and the Indian, these two races have nothing alike, except that they were both treated by the whites or European like a lower animals, who view themselves as a superiors in intelligence, and in power. And those who are inferior rank in the country have to obey and suffer from their tyranny. Negro have been brought from African by the European as slaves to help their master in plantation and agriculture, but he makes them subservient to his use, if they cannot subdue, they will get server punishment or even put to death. Even though they are descendants of the Africans, Negro of the United States had lost their connection with their own country, losing their custom and languages that their forefathers once speak. Losing themselves to the European, they are stuck between the two communities’ one who sold them, and the other who repulsed them. Without a place for them to be, or a place to them to call home, except a place that they know which is their master home. Once the Negro became slaves his lost all his right as a human, he is now a property

As mentioned earlier, Abina wanted to punish her master, Eddoo for wrongly enslaving her. Abina wasn’t as educated as the important men hearing her case, but she truly believed she was a slave. She expressed herself in her own language which wasn’t clearly understood by the important men of the court. Because she lacked education causing her to contradict, become confused or inaccurately answer the questions, Eddoo’s lawyer and the men began to create a difference between being a slave and acting upon free will like a slave. The magistrate, Mr. Melton, asked Abina if during her stay with Eccoah and Quamina Eddoo, was she “compelled to work against her will.” (Chapter 3, page

Hester Prynne is kind of a role model, almost. I admire her ability to admit to sin and be willing to take the consequences. Surely she was not the only one during Puritan times who had an affair, or even sinned. Everyone sins every day, and so technically everyone should have a scarlet letter of some sort. In my opinion, this makes Hester above everyone else.

“A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.”(137) Because of that day, the narrator made a decision that he felt was best for him at the time, which was to let the world make their own perception of him. “I argued that to forsake one’s race to better one’s condition was no less worthy an action than to forsake one’s country for the same purpose. I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with the label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.” (139)

We find out how much Roger and Hester have in common. They are both holding a deep secret, they are unhappy and they both have a very desirable skill and both live on the outskirts of this Puritan society.

In the story of “There Is No Exile” it involves with religious traditions and identity. For example, a character in the story is getting married but doesn't want to, it's a marriage tradition where the older adults arrange a marriage for their children and know their roles. What it means to know their roles it means to do what the adults tell them to do. Another example, in “There Is No Exile” they narrator who was meeting with the family who she was going to marry one of the family members in that family was supposed to stay quiet

“On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him." Chapter 1, pg. 46

All their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine…. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny…. Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

The Scarlet Letter Introduction The Scarlet Letter is a classic tale of sin, punishment, and revenge. It was written in 1850 by the famous American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It documents the lives of three tragic characters, each of whom suffer greatly because of his or her sins. Shot Plot The story begins with Hester Prynne, a resident of a small Puritan community, being led from the town jailhouse to a public scaffold where she must stand for three hours as punishment for adultery. She must also wear a scarlet A on her dress for the rest of her life as part of her punishment. As she is led to the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd complain that

In the beginning of part 3, we are given insight on Obinze’s experience in England and how it was not nearly as successful as Ifemelu’s was in America. Similarly, to many other chapters, this chapter focused on identity, as Obinze starts feeling “invisible.” Adichie shows the struggles that an African immigrant in a different country could possibly experience, Obinze is forced to reach a new low in his life and perform menial jobs just to survive while in Europe. Obinze learns that every immigrant must build up a new identity when they move to a new country to be successful and to basically survive. Nicholas and Obinze are the first example of changing to fit in.

As a negro in the 19th and 20th centuries, her realized that he held a low position within society. While he knew what people thoughht of him, he also knew that by virtue of his education he was not entirely a “problem”. To the whites he was known as a taken good person within black society.

The life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination… the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land (qtd. in W.T.L. 235).

In the stories of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the antagonist characters display parallel story lines through their searches for the enemy. Roger Chillingworth, the former husband of Hester Prynne and the antagonist of The Scarlet Letter, works against his wife in order to find her untold second lover. Frankenstein is a contrasting story in which an unnamed monster is the antagonist towards his human creator, Dr. Frankenstein. Yet despite quite different story lines, the two characters possess traits that exibit parallels between them. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth displays the startling passionate characteristics of an unwavering drive to seek out his foe, madness as his focus on his search takes over his entire being, and terrible anguish when his task is unexpectedly over, all of which are reflected in the daemon created at the hand of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.