Struggle In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'Little Daffydowndilly'

Pyncheon is always aware of his form as well as his appearance towards others like “broad benevolence,” and a “scrupulous” attention to the rich and poor. The narrator suddenly transitions from Judge Pyncheon’s “admirably arranged life” to his “early and reckless youth.” Nathaniel Hawthorne ultimately describes Pyncheon’s “looking-glass” image, his party mask. This “hard, cold man” can only be brought down by the public loss of interest in him. The intensity of the narrator’s diction makes the Judge’s contrasting inner and outer characters obvious and blatant.

The Palace Thief, a short story written by Ethan Canin, explains the bond through the narrator communications. The interactions with the characters demonstrate the character's personalities, experiences and the family shapes of individuals selfhood. The narrator of the story mainly focuses on the twist of an individual character. In this essay, I'm going to go over the relationships and correlations of characters William Hundert (Mr. Hundert), the three-year teacher at St. Benedict Academy, Charles Ellebry, who went against Mr. Hundert for teaching duties, Sedgewick Bell, who was a very clever student, and Senator Bell, who was a powerful demagogue.

Joey R. Poole presents an intriguing story in “The Hand-Me-Downs.” Simon is a straight shooting kid that follows rules and does not ask many questions. But later in the story, the reader can tell that the violence surrounding Simon erodes his attitude. He begins to stand up to his brother and he begins to understand that he has free will. At the beginning of the story, the reader can tell that Simon is a typical innocent young kid but by the end of the story, the reader is convinced otherwise. Simon changes as the story progresses representing a dynamic character rather than a static character.

Do you act differently around certain people? Are your actions different because you want to impress a girl, the popular kids, or your teacher you want a letter of recommendation from? All around the world, people try to disguise their true self, just so they can fit in and be someone they are not. In The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale had been living behind a mask for seven excruciating years, as he remained unwilling to face the repercussions of society for his adulterous affair with Hester Prynne. If Dimmesdale was his honest and true self, he would have escaped death. While the epic is exaggerated through paranormal and supernatural occurrences, many of the punishments inflicted and morals questioned are quite topical today. Nathaniel Hawthorne encourages the readers to ‘show freely to the world’, no matter how daunting that personality may be (410). Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s downfall affirms the damaging effects of falsifying one’s disposition in The Scarlet Letter and today’s society.

Suddenly looking around himself, the child begins to notice the outbuildings as if they were familiar to him and realizes that he is not at a plantation he has never seen before, but is instead watching his own home that he had left earlier that afternoon burn to the ground. Upon this realization the boy begins to run around the conflagration, and comes upon the prostrate body of

However, Dimmesdale’s self-punishment goes to a new level when he begins to torture himself physically. Not only had the minister been refusing to seek help, evident by his uneasiness towards Roger’s medical advice even before his true identity was revealed, but he went as far as to inflict harm upon himself. As Nathaniel Hawthorne describes, “In Dimmesdale’s secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge.... It was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast… until his knees trembled beneath him… He kept vigils, likewise, night after night…” (141). This demonstrated the extent of Dimmesdale's self-punishment through starvation, whippings, and sleep deprivation. The self-torment escalates even further when it is found out that Dimmesdale had also been imprinting his chest with the letter “A,” leaving many to theorize that the mark either came from burning or cutting. In comparing Dimmesdale’s fasting to that of the other Puritans, Hawthorne also states, that Dimmesdale did not harm himself “in order to purify the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination, but… as an act of penance” (141). The novel emphasizes that Dimmesdale’s self-torment is not him committing self-flagellation to purify his soul of sin, but rather an attempt to punish himself for what he believed was a wrong-doing. Due to these actions, Dimmesdale’s character could be viewed as a desperate man attempting to right his wrongs, but the fact

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main characters have different kinds of burdens to carry depending on their level of ownership over their actions and identity. Dimmesdale has the worst burden to bear because he did not own up to his actions until the very end, Hester has to adjust to the punishment that the Puritans gave her, and Pearl has no burden because she is honest. Throughout the novel, they face different obstacles that contribute to their everyday lives that makes it hard to process everything at once. It’s also to show how the characters were able to face the problems and deal with them

Isn’t it remarkable how Arthur Dimmesdale manages to somehow, for seven years, keep his private life separate from his public one? In regards to Arthur’s behavior, Hawthorne states, “No man, for a considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without getting bewildered as to which may be true.” To restate Hawthorne’s quote: no one can be true to him or herself, while lying to everyone because soon enough one will confuse the act with reality. Having a Dimmesdale’s style of living results in living a double life, plenty of penance, and self-damage affecting loved ones.

Humans have a natural ability to know what is right and just and what is wrong. However, people are tempted on a regular basis, and often times people choose to go against what is right for what they want at the moment. Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the struggle of one man with his personal temptations in the short story, “Young Goodman Brown”. Through a trip into the woods on a dark, gloomy night, Young Goodman Brown battles between what he knows is right and what sparks his curiosity—what the others and doing in the woods—the same theme portrayed in Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog.” In this short story, Young Goodman Brown loses his faith in humanity’s ability to do good when he is convinced the great lie by the “dark one”.

One of the major ideas that Romantic authors emphasized was reliance on instinct. This idea is present in many Romantic works, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance. By characterizing Pearl as an unrestrained, intuitively intelligent being and contrasting her with Dimmesdale’s hesitant and tortured character, Hawthorne reveals the problems of society suppressing individuals from listening to their instincts, reminding us that we often think and act according to how we think we should think and act rather than trusting our intuition; Emerson makes similar commentary in Self Reliance, employing an assertive and passionate tone.

Nathaniel Hawthorne never really presented a solution to any of his protagonist’s problems, all we were left with questions of what is to become of them next? How did their actions help bring their problems to an end? These problems that aren’t solved are deep internal problems that can be solved by simply researching Hawthorne 's life and all the things going on in his life around the time he wrote the story. Most of these problems are given to the protagonist because of problems Hawthorne face in his own life, problems that he faced while he was a child. These were problems that shaped him into the person he was when he was writing these fascinating stories.

Conflict can take on many forms in one’s life, such as conflict with self, with society, with religion and with others. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, develops the theme of conflict through the moral sin of Hester Prynne. Conflict is observed through Hester’s difficulties with the townspeople, challenges with the Puritan way of life, struggles with herself and tensions with Roger Chillingworth. Committing sin in the Puritan society leads to a great deal of conflicts.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of American literature's finest writers; his writing style was very distinct and unusual in some aspects. It is his background that provided this ambiguous and complex approach to writing. Hawthorne's New England heritage has, at times, been said to be the contributing factor in his works. The Puritan view of life itself was considered to be allegorical, their theology rested primarily on the idea of predestination and the separation of the saved and the damned As evident from Hawthorne's writings his intense interest in Puritanical beliefs often carried over to his novels such as, Young Goodman Brown, The Scarlet Letter, and The Minister's Black Veil just to name a few of the more well known pieces of his work.

The father appeals to the boy’s logic by ascribing “to the moroseness, the imperiousness, or the garrulity of old age” that outweighs the naiveté of youth making an appeal to give the letter a thoughtful read. Chesterfield continues repeating twice “I flatter myself that …” in a long verbose thought that ends reiterating that his only objective is in his son’s best interest so that he may have his father’s advice. Then, Chesterfield starts with a series of contradictions so that he does not seem like a bothersome parent because he does not “dictate as a parent” but means to “advise as a friend” and desires “to be a guide, not the censor.” Chesterfield’s use of alliteration and series of contradictions is a manipulation of syntax to entice the son into reading the letter before it shows antagonism concerning the father’s prospects towards the son’s

In Jack London’s “The Apostate” he demonstrates the use of conflict to convey the idea that subjugating children to a large amount of responsibility can have detrimental effects on their mental and physical state. The protagonist of the short story, Johnny, is a teenager that struggles with simultaneously being the “perfect” factory worker and the main provider of his family. Whenever he tries to communicate his feelings to his mother “…to express the sense of unfairness that he feels, his mouth closes with a snap” (9). Johnny knows that his mother will never truly understand him because she does not see from his perspective as a full-time factory laborer and caretaker, therefore his plea is futile. His state of being and mind deteriorates