The Scarlet Letter - Hester

Even in only a few chapters of reading, Hester shows some strong personality traits that really make her stand out not only as a women in that time period, but as a character in general.

In the first scene in the book, the whole town is waiting around just to stare at Hester as she walks out of the jail, wearing the A on her chest. A lot of people would have dissolved into tears in this kind of humiliating situation. But Hester, keeps her cool. When she first emerges from the jail, Hester "...with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors." This shows that she is proud and fierce, not hiding and guilty but strong and defiant. She's showing that thee town may be able to force her to wear this badge of shame and stand in front of the town, but they can't force her to feel bad about what she did. Something else about Hester is that she is not very trusting of other people, probably with good reason. When Chillingworth offers her medicine, she "repelled the medicine, at the same time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his face." This says a lot about her outlook on the world. She probably feels really alone, like it's her against everyone else, which it kind of is. Hester has also proved to be very loyal and strong-willed. When asked again and again about the identity of her child's father, she says, "Ask me not... that thou shalt never know." Even though her punishment would be lessened if she shared this information, she remains loyal to him. She even agrees to keep quiet about Chillingworth when he asks her to. Hester is completely different from the other women in the village, and I think she is mostly just misunderstood by everyone else.

Religion

Religion does not play a huge role in my life. I'm Jewish but not really strict about it. For instance, the holiday Yom Kippur was this weekend and you're supposed to fast for the whole day. I did not fast at all nor did I have any intention to. I probably would not have even realized it was Yom Kippur if my dad hadn't gone to temple. I dropped out of Hebrew School right after my Bat Mitzvah, which I had a year earlier than most people do. It's not that I'm opposed to religion, and I wouldn't by any means call myself an atheist, but religion just doesn't play that big a role in my life. I guess a big part of it is that I'm very aware that I'm Jewish not because I want to be but because my dad is. I have always celebrated Christmas and Easter with my mom's side of the family. They are also not very religious. You will never see a cross in my grandma's house at the Christmas Eve party or hear the word "Jesus" spoken at any time, but there are a lot of Santa/reindeer related decorations and a freakish amount of presents under the tree.

As for the role that religion should play in government/society/schools, I don't think that it should play much of a role at all. It just makes people upset, like with the whole "one nature under God" commotion. I have always thought that a lot of people use religion and politics to hide behind their own problems and to find excuses to argue with other people. What religion we are has nothing to do with our education; if you want that kind of situation than go to Sunday School or whatever. I remember being in like, second grade singing the songs and saying the Lord's Prayer in Chapel and wondering vaguely if I shouldn't be. It never really upset me or anything, but it probably does upset some people. Nothing good ever comes from bringing religion issues into things because there is no way that everyone will agree about it. On the other hand, it's impossible to separate religion out of other aspects of our lives, no matter how much we want to. I remember years ago there was some politician who was Jewish, and my dad talking about how he was definitely going to vote for him. I asked my dad what if the Jewish guy was trying to corrupt our society or was incredibly stupid or something, would he still vote for him and my dad said yes, only partially joking. Even though I was probably like eight when this happened, I remember getting kind of mad about this. Religion should have nothing to do with why you would vote for someone, but it probably always will to some people.

Thoughts on Issues From Discussion

In the discussion with Chang-Rae Lee, we talked a lot about identity. Identity is a big inner conflict of Henry Park's in Native Speaker. A lot of questions centered around this in our discussion. He talked about growin gup in New York, which made it easier to fit in because of the diversity. In Hawaii, it's also easier to fit in than it is in other places because of the diversity. Living in Hawaii, I've always felt like I fit in ethnically. I never really felt different than everyone else because a lot of people here are Asian or part Asian, so growing up, I never really thought about it. Problems with identity come in other forms too, though. High school is kind of the perfect example of the inner struggle of identity. We have to decide where we fit in, with what group aand our place within that group. It's not something that is as unchangeably permenant as ethnicity, but it's still a situation in which we have to find the category into which we fit in. Something else that we talked about a lot in the discussion was immigration. I agree with the statement that only the Native Americans, if anyone, can call this country theirs. Saying that the Europeans got here first isn't true, they got here second (Yay, Ada Valley metaphor! The Wanyamans got there first, then the Kakungans, then the Hos). And like in Ada Valley, having everyone get along is not going to solve anything, but it's a step. It's not that simple. There's no way that everyone will be happy when it comes to issues like immigration.

Native Speaker Conflict

One of the obvious conflicts in the book is the conflict between the narrator and his wife. The first couple years of their marriage were good, but then they started to avoid each other and become distant. They are still technically married, but she is always gone on trips and his work takes him all over. The book starts with Henry's wife, Lelia, handing him a rather mean list of his flaws. The only thing that ties them together is their past. The issue hasn't been resolved in the beginning of the book, but it will hopefully get resolved eventually. Henry's friend, Jack, thinks that everything will turn out all right, but other characters, such as Henry's boss, are less optimistic. In order for the conflict to be resolved, one or both of the characters has to do something, rather than just running away from their problems.

Two-Dimensional Artifact

I’ve seen this symbol on bumper stickers and t-shirts. I don’t know where it comes from or anything, but I think that the fact that you can choose your religion in America represents a big part of being an American.
When I had my discussion with my mom about what it means to be an American, the first thing she said was freedom to worship whatever religion we choose. This was the first thing I thought of, too.
There are a lot of choices that our government makes that I don’t agree with, but one thing that you can say for America is that you can choose to be whatever you want. Even though we still have prejudice against certain ethnicities and religions, at least we are all given equal opportunities. This symbol asks all religions to coexist peacefully together, and while I don’t think that we are quite there yet, we are certainly closer than a lot of countries. Not only do we have freedom to choose our own religion, we have the freedom to do a lot of things, like vote and get an education. There are not these types of opportunities in other countries, especially for women.
It’s a cliché, but I think that the most important value in American society is freedom. We have the opportunity to do whatever we want, within reason. Being an American, it’s hard to imagine being punished for being a woman or worshipping a different god, but in other places it does happen.