Saturday, June 13, 2015

Critical Lens Experts 1: Heavy Heart

Kilborne's analysis of the Scarlet Letter can pretty much be summed up as "Hester displays her shame with pride, negating it. Dimmesdale is ashamed and it stews further". Hester represents social shame, and Dimmesdale represents personal shame. This makes sense, and lines up with my thoughts. Hester displays her letter prominently, despite the negative connotation, while Dimmesdale hides his away to try to avoid it due to his own personal feelings. By displaying her faults, Hester accepts them, while Dimmesdale's own personal shame leads to intense personal struggle.

The rest of it is rambling and shaky connections that could make sense, but seem like overanalyzed coincidence. I don't like when people assume that literally everything has some sort of deep metaphorical context, because it usually doesn't. Hawthorne's lack of dad may have influenced Dimmesdale's shame of not being dad, but when it leads to 10 pages of analysis on the subtle nuances on how it sucks to be not dad, you might be a bit too far down the rabbit hole.

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