the end of the book bothered me so much
and many of the characters' religious motives more so
that i will probably enter the internet-yelling world
of CAPITAL LETTERS at some point here.
so.
A) chillingworth keeps being a JERK right up to the end.
he freaking GRABS dimmesdale and tries to stop him going up on the scaffold.
B) dimmesdale still feels the need to admit and do his penance, i can deal with that.
but he freaking KILLS himself to do so, whereas he was going to run away with hester and pearl.
C) the whole deal where in the beginning, hester and dimmesdale are at least somewhat in love, have sex, and hester has a baby. because a few words in the presence of a minister were not spoken, the whole marriage thing, hester is shunned from polite society forever, pretty much, and she would have been killed, except that she had a baby. also, dimmesdale suffers internally for seven years. and both hester and dimmesdale feel that because they did something they wanted to do, they must suffer, and they are happy to do so! well, not happy, happy would be bad, but they do nothing to alleviate any of their sufferings. thank you puritan religion for making people feel like crap.
D) the only good thing to come out the the whole beginning of the book was pearl, a free-spirited child, the only person who really always did what she wanted. and at the end of the book, it is heavily implied that her free-spiritedness was only god punishing hester and dimmesdale, and now that they're punished enough, she can be a normal boring person!
our page 175: "...as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it."
that bothered me the most.
but, in summation, everyone claimed to pretty much have religious (granted, puritan) motivation for their actions, especially the ones that made them or other people feel miserable. any time anyone did something fun or exciting, it was either a sin or a demon-infested child.
what the hell.
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In B) I understood that he knew that he was going to die, not that he killed himself - that's a big difference, I think. In C) and D) I totally agree, but the reason why I'm writing this comment (you can probably guess) is that your blaming religion for everything is not very fair. Sometimes it's like if I would focus on Dr. Mengele and only with him argue against the whole science. "Moral pattern" of Puritan era was product of religion, but it is just a small part of the whole thing, and people in it had certainly religious motivation, but also did Jesus and Francis of Assisi and Gandhi and Mother Theresa...
ReplyDeleteok, i grant it wasn't as religiously motivated as i'd first thought
ReplyDeleteand religion does do some good things, the puritan era certainly isn't a good example of all religion
but to me the puritan era does represent all religion, albeit extremely
it's not quite that bad