Reflection

Part I:

The Scarlet Letter Reflection:

During the period of time I wrote my Scarlet Letter essay, examples of scapegoating someone was apparent in our society. Political figures were being blamed for other's mistakes, such as the Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. He was blamed for the actions that he could not control of people under him and his name was slandered by the media and Congress. That situation related to what Hawthorne showed through the character of Hester in the Scarlet Letter. I was attempting to see how well I could prove that the main theme of the book was to show how society creates scapegoats. America creates scapegoats at an alarming pace and it is very possible for you to be one at some point in your life. I learned that through writing and analyzing a book you recently read you can discover aspects of the book that were previously unknown to you, and also develop ideas and thoughts about different themes the author was aiming for. I basically did no brainstorming, charts, or diagrams, but I rather just tried to type my thoughts as fast as I was thinking them, which is where I believe I excel. I have learned through this class that "over-planning" an essay can restrict your creativity and stick to boring sentences with not much in it other than cold, hard facts. I also learned that if I am trying to talk in active voice, I have to make sure I stick to it or it can ruin an otherwise good essay.

Nature Essay Reflection:

In my essay on nature and transcendentalism, I struggled because the concept and beliefs of transcendentalism are so hard to find in these modern days. All around us we see woods and forests being torn down and being replaced with businesses, homes, and roads. We do not seem to be attempting to find answers and knowledge through viewing nature, because we are tearing it down and trampling on its sacred grounds. Through these examples I tried to portray how transcendentalism is a concept hard to relate to and discover in these times. After analyzing transcendentalism, I realized that I agree with almost all of the aspects of it. But I realized I was being a bit hypocritical because I have been somewhat responsible for the destruction of nature, however small, when my family moved into a house that was previously wooded and apart from man, but during the development of the neighborhood the trees, bushes, and underbrush were cut down and replaced with paved roads, houses, and street lights. I did no brainstorming or diagrams of any sort because I honestly couldn't; the topic at hand was not one I would to a good job elaborating on it, so I hoped to express my views on transcendentalism and just do what was required of me. I have learned from this essay that I should try to be as creative as possible with my writing, even in situations where I can't seem to find a way to make a decent point. I also learned from this that researching the topic at hand creates doors of opportunity for your writing, because the more you know the more you can speak about. It's a simplistic idea, but it worked very well for me.

Part II:

I started my revision process on my Scarlet Letter essay by going back and correcting any grammatical errors she noticed and easily fixed them. After that, I painstakingly went through the essay and corrected the parts where I was not talking in active voice, which took awhile because at first I didn't grasp the concept at first and had a hard time locating where I did this. But after I finished my revision, I noticed Mrs. Turner was right and that it improved my essay dramatically by just making a few corrections and filling in the holes. I can't link you to where I edited what I fixed because it has already been fixed, but the results are noticeable in the essays. During my nature essay I began to repeat myself in a negative way, not emphasizing key points but rather basically word for word repetition because I was running out of things to say. With Mrs. Turner's help I managed to cut out excess and unneeded sentences from my nature essay that were serving as distractions in the essay. I also went back in each piece and edited certain words that had been repeated and could just as easily with something that meant practically the exact same thing, such as "persistence" and "determination" in my Scarlet Letter essay.

Part III:

After reading Luke Mosteller's nature essay, I learned that his style of writing may be something that I could learn from. He smoothly transitions from first person to talking about the topic at hand in third person, which helps the essay dramatically. Usually when I try to do this, people notice it and tell me to correct it, but in Luke's case, it seems to help his essay. Luke's Essay

After completing Shyniqua's roller-blading essay, it wasn't hard to realize how different our styles were. She used comedy and satirical comments to build her essay, while I just stuck to facts and elaboration. While it would be tough for me to match her skills in writing a comedy, which is what it basically was, it made me realize that if I interjected humor, satire, and irony, it would make me a much better writer. Meshing comedy and factual writing in my opinion is extremely tough to do and would take me a long time to master, but I can now use Shyniqua's essay as a guide for that very purpose. Shyniqua's Essay

After reading and finishing laughing at Cauley's nature essay, I couldn't help but think how well she was able to add so much comedy in her writing and still manage to stay on topic. Reading this helped teach me how pure comedy in an essay and not much else can be a great way to entertain and humor your audience and put things in a different perspective. I was impressed with her similes and adjectives, such as "beastly hot" and the line about the samurai ninja. This helped show me the creativity and independence you can use when adding different aspects to your paper such as similes, metaphors, and personification. I had never seen an essay written quite like this, and I was overall impressed with the quality. Cauley's Essay

Nature Essay

As I walked through the woods on our nature walk, I could not help but to think how different our modern society is from the seemingly “ancient” society that Thoreau lived in. It requires much deliberation and planning to be able to find a natural environment, unhindered by modern man either by a state law, the remoteness of the location, or the uninhabitable living space. Unlike Thoreau, nature is no longer around us in its original form. In the woods I walked through, there were ROTC props everywhere, beer cans, plastic, rope, etc. I was unable to get the experience Thoreau had almost everyday, which hinders my ability to judge and speculate on the ideals of transcendentalism. What also puts me at a disadvantage is the fact that I have seen many and most of the world’s most beautiful sights in pictures, but not in person. While it would still be awe-inspiring to see these sights, it would be hard to achieve the same level of inspiration one might receive by viewing the Niagara Falls or Angel Falls for the first time.

One aspect of transcendentalism that I agree with is that nature and our inner-being contains God’s spirit and we can seemingly get closer to God through experiencing nature. I also agree with that the physical world we live in is just a hint as to what the spiritual world is like. This idea would not be embraced by today’s society, because it incorporates the belief in a God and other views such as intuition and spontaneous feelings are superior to rationality and intellectualism. People escaping to nature to gather their thoughts and find meaning and answers to things by deriving intuition from viewing nature is basically unheard of. Also, I agree with transcendentalism’s beliefs that God is good, He works through nature, and events in the world can be explained on a spiritual level and have a purpose not immediately seen or understood. Conforming to custom and tradition is something I try not to do and transcendentalists did also, because you can get lost in doing things a certain way and missing the whole point of the problem at hand. To sum up my view of transcendentalism, I agree with Emerson’s and Thoreau’s views on this. True, they may seem a bit “hippy” or “out-dated”, but I believe they were on the right track.

As Emerson put it in “Nature”, “The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.” This quote shows his belief in nature’s ability to remove oneself from the hectic and jammed life we live in, and help him to see things he may not be able to with life’s distractions and constant fast pace. For example, it is hard to meditate and search inside yourself while on a busy street, with noise, people, cars, machines, and pollution swirling around you. But when you allow yourself to be swallowed by nature’s beauty and elegance, you find answers to problems that seemed insurmountable when thinking about it during your lunch break while trying to carry on a conversation with a group of people. Emerson brilliantly used this aphorism, which he is famous for using in many of his writings, to show how the simplicity of nature can draw a line between our busy schedule and help us to plunge into our spiritual, emotional life, which is the most important thing of all.

Thoreau writes in “Walden”:

“… I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

He is speaking about how he started living in nature and relying on nature to survive, and not being chained to life’s demanding aspects. Nature can teach us many life lessons that we would never be able to learn if we continually kept working and worrying on the pressures of existing in the place we fondly call Earth. I believe somewhere along the short expanse of human history, man unintentionally swayed from reliance on nature for survival, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and turned to ourselves for the ability to overcome life’s struggles. We had our class schedule changed and became students of ration, intellectualism, and logic, and left nature by itself. As we saw on the nature walk and we see everywhere around us, we mess with nature and destroy it at times and abuse it at others and almost always take it for granted, but what is left of nature seems to be always willing to accept us with open arms to teach us life lessons and instill in us supernatural awe and show us that no matter how hard we try, our modern man-made wonders will never be able to compete with the beauty and simplicity of nature.

The Scarlet Letter Essay

The Scarlet Letter
By: Hank Donaldson

Public ridicule, constant persecution, imprisonment, outcast from society. Sounds like religious persecution that people experience in a third world country, right? True, but it is also actually what Hester Pryne from The Scarlet Letter faces for committing adultery in 17th century America. In our time of political correctness and understanding of almost anything, it is hard to imagine these atrocities were committed on American soil by our ancestors. The hardships that she, a young, lonely mother, faced would drive many to insanity and chronic depression, but her strong will, determination, and unending persistence helped pull her through and overcome these obstacles.

Society needs, practically craves, a scapegoat to place all of the blame in a sour situation on something, or somebody. As long as the blame is deflected off our own shoulders, and we continue to appear to look good and retain our reputation, who cares what happens to the scapegoat? This is exactly a theme Hawthorne illustrates with the Puritan's actions against Hester. While Hester is on the scaffold, enduring the stares and comments of hundreds of her peers, many of whom acting as if they themselves have never sinned, even though there were surely other adulterers in the crowd, all she can do and does is suffer through this public humiliation. Parents begin to use Hester as an example to their children of a sinner, and children begin to avoid Hester and her baby daughter, Pearl, and even resort to throwing mud, rocks, and insulting them as they try to lead as normal a life as possible. The Puritans looked down upon adultery because it was denounced in the Bible and looked upon as a sin, but little did they know they had skipped over several key passages in the Bible condemning judging others and not forgiving them, such as two popular verses in Matthew. "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." -Matthew 6:14-15. The Puritans were experts at judging, but needed to re-read Matthew to find that they, too, were also sinning in the midst of their good intentions. Had they known this, Hester would not have had to use her inspiring characteristics and demeanor nearly as much as she had to.

Hester faces continuing strife, but also joy, from the site and actions of her daughter, Pearl. Hester has to raise Pearl by her self, uncommon in that time, but also without the help of friends, family, or neighbors, making her situation almost unheard of. Nobody wants to help a sinner like Hester, and especially have nothing to do with her "demon child" or "elf-child" Pearl. She raises Pearl on a meager salary in a harsh and hostile environment. In the midst of her sacrifice, Pearl is almost taken away by the leaders in the town because of Hester's old sins. Hester brilliantly defends herself and stands up to these important men, crying, "She is my happiness!-she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me too!" and later in her pleading adds, "Ye shall not take her! I will die first!" Hester remarkably shows her resolve to keep the child and also explains Pearl is like the scarlet letter in a way, constantly torturing her but she would have nothing else. She loves Pearl to death and tries to protect her from the antics of the society and give her the best life she could possibly give under the circumstances. Being thrown out of society and left to fend for herself and her child, Hester exhibits qualities that we can all learn from, especially commitment to those we love, fighting society's injustices, and the amazing maturity to keep her grounded and from not going completely berserk.

Criminals are commonly caught because of "snitches" and backstabbers. The thought that the Puritans believed Hester would turn against her life's love and expose him astounds me. Common sense dictates that the requirements for true love does not include betrayal. Hester constantly faces questioning from the Puritans, her daughter Pearl, and her estranged and evil husband, Roger Chillingworth. While on the scaffold, listening to repetitive speeches from ministers and the governor about how God hated her sin and her actions were wrong, she is told she will be able to be forgiven of her sin if she reveals the father and that she will not have to wear the scarlet letter on her breast for the remainder of her life. The father of Pearl, unknowingly to the Puritans, makes a grand speech about her sin, knowing that he too had sinned with her. Hester's love of Dimmesdale never falters in the seven years she does not speak with Dimmesdale, and also for all the pain she suffers alone without the rest of the guilty party, Dimmesdale, by her side to help her and comfort her through. When her twisted husband, Chillingworth, asks her who the father is so he may seek revenge, Hester firmly, "Ask me not! That thou shalt never know!" Undaunted by this, Chillingworth spends all of his time and energy devoted to finding the father, while Hester also spends great amounts of time and energy covering for the father and not once regretting it.

Through the character of Hester, Hawthorne teaches all that read The Scarlet Letter the qualities essential to living a life, through all amounts of pain and hardship. It is a sad thing to think that Christians inflicted all of this on another Christian. Humans are not perfect and will sin and make mistakes, as Hester did, but also as every other Puritan did. The determination Hester exhibits that she uses to overcome the never ending ridicule is awe-inspiring. She teaches us to not let others bring us down and to keep on chugging through life and try to enjoy it as much as possible. Her qualities she keeps about her throughout her life help change the meaning of the letter A from Adulterer, to Able, and finally to Angel.