A Short Explanation

Yeah, it's a boring title. Sue me.

This is just a formality to wrap up the past three posts I've done (The Nature of Hemingway/Defoe/Hawthorne). If you didn't already gather via reading them--or, I suppose, if you read this first--the overarching goal of those three posts was encapsulating the relationship between the various protagonists of the novel's I've read, and their relationship to nature.

Their relationships are on a very wide spectrum, with one end being Defoe, one end being Hemingway, and Hawthorne being somewhere in the middle. Defoe conquers natures, Hawthorne confides in it, and Hemingway submits to it. I'm not going to lie, writing them was a lot more interesting than I bargained for.

So, with that in mind, read on.

The Nature of Defoe

Perhaps the most difficult comparison between a main character and nature is found in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. That’s why I saved this one for last. It isn’t difficult due to a heavy depth of character—in fact, it’s quite the opposite. As far as I’m concerned, Crusoe is hardly a stand-alone man. He’s too shallow; he’s less of a person and more of a plot device. Crusoe is about as deep as a kiddy pool. But, to each his own, I suppose.

Even in Crusoe’s vapid monologues, there’s quite a lot to be found regarding man’s relationship to nature, involving an interesting concept called the “Noble Savage”. The Noble Savage is an idealistic look at detachment from humanity, the basic notion that humans are born pure and corrupted by society. As someone who’s been around devious small children before, I can’t say I agree with that, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. Crusoe himself isn’t a Noble Savage—specifically, a Noble Savage is an outsider, revered for his innocence and isolation. Crusoe, though, and his actions, support the ideals of a Noble Savage.

His story begins with a baseless desire: exploration. It’s made clear in the beginning of the book that society—his parents, his peers—aren’t necessarily fond of Crusoe’s yearning to be at sea. Even Crusoe himself questions his desires, when confronted with a less-than-welcoming storm:

“I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life this one voyage, If I ever once got my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these anymore... And I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father,”

It’s safe to say that Crusoe’s decision to go to sea wasn’t the best idea. His aspirations fly in the face of logic itself, but Crusoe follows them anyway—a relatively played-out trope, but I can forgive that, given that the book was written three and a half centuries ago. The key point here is that despite all the pressures of society to remain within its grasp, Crusoe leaves anyway. And, inadvertently or not, things start to look up. Not long after being stranded upon an island with no human contact, Crusoe begins to see the bounty of nature, lush and plentiful around him.

“How mercifully can our Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction! How can He sweeten the bitterest providences, and give us cause to praise Him for dungeons and prisons! What a table was here spread for me in a wilderness where I saw nothing at first but to perish for hunger!” 

To the same god who Crusoe once prayed to for liberation from his silly desire of being at sea, he now wholeheartedly thanks for the situation presented before him. Rebuking his prior folly, Crusoe thinks to himself, what an idiot he was—there was all this, right in front of him, and all he could do was starve. But the efficacy of his escapades exponentially enhances. Crusoe takes command of nature around him, and recreates a society that rivals the one which he left so long ago.

“My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked. First of all, the whole country was my own mere property, Baso that I had an undoubted right of dominion. Secondly, my people were perfectly subjected. I was absolute lord and lawgiver, they all owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives, if there had been occasion of it, for me.”

How far have you come indeed, Crusoe, from the lonely stranded cabin boy who ended up on an island? You’re a king now. You’ve got a castle, you’ve got a kingdom, and you’ve got peasants who’d drop dead on command for you. And you’re isolated beyond all communication with the rest of the world. In the small universe you’ve made for yourself, you might as well be god.

By the end of the book, Crusoe and nature have entirely switched places. Before, Crusoe was subdued to a crying mess by one storm, and now, he has his own world. Crusoe did what Hemingway would say is impossible—he conquered nature. Not only that, he did it while breaking Hemingway’s #1 rule of manliness—he cracked under pressure. A lot. But nonetheless, he managed it. And with that in mind, I propose a new title for future editions of Defoe’s lovely novel:

“From the vapid disarray of a one-dimensional kid’s TV show host, to the calculated fanaticism of an evil genius, the success story of Robinson Crusoe—how to conquer nature in six easy steps.”

The Nature of Hawthorne

If we were to personify Hemingway’s—Lieutenant Henry’s—relationship to nature, an apt allegory would be hard to find in the context of romantic relationships. That particular dynamic is better summed up with the association between a landlord and a tenant who hasn't paid his rent and is waiting to be inevitably ousted. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s—and Hester Prynne’s—relationship to nature, however, is ripe for that type of comparison.

To Hester, nature is her getaway. Nature is where she can retreat to, and confide in, to avoid the criticism and gall of puritan society. Indeed, if Hester’s relationship to nature were to be personified, she and nature would be two naughty little teenagers, secretly cavorting under the watchful eye of conservative, mid-17^th century Bostonians. And, interestingly enough, that’s pretty much the plot of the book.

The Hester Prynne that we all know and love wasn't always what she is today. The early chapters of the book portray a much more different—impetuous and hotheaded—Hester that has to be restrained by her parents on a regular basis. This heavily contrasts the “current” Hester, a stoic and impassive woman, characterized by her denial of Puritan norms. Despite this, though, we often see a little bit of the former Hester break through.

“‘Speak, woman!’ said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold, ‘Speak; and give your child a father!’

‘I will not speak!’ answered Hester, turning pale as death,”

The heavy brand that Hester has had to bear for most of her life—the Scarlet Letter—has changed her. Like my good friend Philip Swanson, displays of emotion are few and far between. Hester’s nature has been boxed in by those who believe it to be counterproductive and evil—their fear of change has caused them to shut down any deviation from the norm. Puritan society in The Scarlet Letter is strikingly similar to the “Minnesota Nice” cover-up for judgmentally passive-aggressive people. The irony, is that the bile lying beneath their overt hospitality is far more harmful than the radicals whom they try to suppress—but that’s a whole different rant.

The one place Hester can go to avoid the overbearing permeating smog of fundamentalist Christianity is the forest—an area that borders Boston physically, but emotionally, could not be farther from it. If 17^th century America was my room, Boston would be the shelves and piano you see when you first enter. “Hey, they look pretty nice,” you’d say to yourself. “I bet this guy is pretty organized and cleanly.” The forest, by contrast, would be my closet. The doors are shut so you’re disincentivized to opening it, and on the off-chance that you do, you’d be greeted in the face with a falling torrent of dirty clothes that were compressed between the shut door and the shelves. Boston doesn’t talk about the forest, just like I don’t talk about my closet, because, as the Puritans would probably say, it gives off a false sense of dishonesty and underlying vitriol that we wouldn’t want you thinking about.

That isn’t what Hester would say, though. Hester would welcome you into the forest, and spend hours talking to you about the lies of the Puritans and how they merely hide their true nature, and how only in the forest can she be free. Or, as Hawthorne would put it:

“Kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure—free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being.”

The forest is literally so different from Boston, that it allows Hester to “emerge into another state of being”. This happens because of the ephemeral freedom she achieves for the length of time she’s away. Quite a few of the book’s important conversations occur within the forest, particularly between Hester and Dimmesdale, regarding their relationship. Surely they could have a conversation under cover of night within Boston, and no one would hear them, right? Not quite—Boston represents a place of judgment and malice. Hester and Dimmesdale wouldn't feel safe there. Only in the forest can they discuss their plans to leave Boston forever, and only in the forest can Hester eradicate her scarlet letter, and all that it stands for.

It’s interesting to note, though, the clear distinction Hester recognizes between the forest and Boston.

“‘Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!’ whispered her mother. ‘We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.’”

Normally notions like that are unsaid, or occur in the subconscious—but here, Hester verbalizes it. “We don’t talk in Boston about what goes on in the forest.” It’s surprisingly akin to the attitude that the Bostonians have about the forest too, albeit for very differing reasons. So, then, the moral of the story? Everyone’s got a dirty closet or an unmade bed somewhere, one way or the other, so we ought to stop caring so much about it.

“John, did you just use The Scarlet Letter to rationalize not cleaning your room?”

Yes. Yes, I did. 

The Nature of Hemingway

There are three things worth living for, Lieutenant Henry might say: Women, Booze, and Sex.

You might think to yourself “But Henry! Isn’t the third merely a subset of the first?”—The answer would be yes, and it would be fully intentional.

Lieutenant Henry’s attitude is, not surprisingly, quite similar to Hemingway’s, his author. Their life stories are equally similar—they were both drawn to aid a war effort at a young age, and they both fell in love with a nurse. What happened to the nurse differs slightly depending on which story you follow, however (but we’ll get to that). To say Hemingway wrote Henry as an allegory for himself would be understating it, especially when you look at the deeper aspects of both characters.

The foundations for Hemingway’s writing were The Kansas City Star’s guidelines: “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative”. These were followed to a T, give or take a few definitions. If vigorous means repetitive and nondescript, then yes. If positive refers not to morality, but to the polarity of his sentences, then yes—it’s hard to argue that the ending scene of A Farewell to Arms where Henry is watching his girlfriend die, only to leave, contemplate saying “goodbye” to her, but deciding not to for the sheer futility of it, is a positive image. But it’s not so hard to see even deeper parallels between Hemingway and Henry.

As an iconic Hemingway code hero, Henry shares Hemingway’s relationship to nature. The defining facet of this is overt pointlessness. None of us will ever conquer nature—it’s an undeniable force that conquers all, and the only thing we can do to give one last “hurrah” before we all die an excruciatingly vain death, is to not do anything. Maintaining composure under harsh circumstances is exactly what Lieutenant Henry does.

               

“’Tell me exactly what happened. Did you do any heroic act?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was blown up while we were eating cheese.’”

The conversation shortly after Lieutenant Henry takes a mortar shell to the leg, epitomizes “maintaining composure under harsh circumstances.” He’s conversing with a medic about the accolades that he should receive for such a heroic act, and Henry refuses to accept any reward. To Henry, he did nothing special. He was blown up while he was eating cheese, nothing more, nothing less.

“’Be serious. You must have done something heroic either before or after. Remember

carefully.’

’I did not.’”

To Henry and Hemingway, the heroic act isn’t carrying a soldier on his back through the fire and the flames, nor is it running at the enemy in a fit of rage, guns blazing. The heroic act is no act at all—it’s being passive. War is a part of nature—it’s another inevitable tidal wave that will crush all your dreams. But, Henry might say, that’s simply what we have to deal with. It’s an ostensibly defeatist stance, but below the surface it’s less about giving up, and more about accepting the inevitable. “But John, that’s exactly what defeatism is.” Well, alright, but Hemingway put a more manly twinge to it.

So there you have it. Henry himself is a perfect Hemingway code hero—both paragons of machismo, Henry and Hemingway show grace under pressure, self containment, and personal honor. They’re the original emotionless and stoic, detached, but sexy, manly men. What were Hemingway’s hobbies? Bullfighting and Big game hunting. What are Henry’s hobbies? Drinking alcohol and taking mortar shells to the leg. You've got to be kidding me. What are my hobbies? I play MMORPGs and write snarky blog posts online.

When it comes right down to it—a phrase that I've never liked—it’s about abandoning your earthly woes and acknowledging what is to come. It’s about welcoming the unavoidable victory of nature over mankind, with a smile on your face, because you know its coming. It’s about complete submission—and total, but dignified, acquiescence. Nature is going to win, so deal with it. Even Henry, purportedly a warrior, begins to set free his desire for victory as the book comes to a close.

“I hoped for a long time for victory.”

“Me too.”

 “Now I don’t know.”

“It has to be one or the other.”

“I don’t believe in victory anymore.”

“I don’t. But I don’t believe in defeat. Though it may be better.”

“What do you believe in?”

“In sleep,” I said.

While the futility of mankind’s struggle against nature is a polarizing issue, everyone can agree upon the necessity of 8-10 hours of sleep so tomorrow seems a little bit brighter. Well, everyone, I suppose, except my teachers around final’s week. 

Melodrama, Spontaneous Tear-Bursting, and a Pocket Knife: The Life and Times of Peter Walsh

Alright. This week's blog prompt isn't as conducive to snarkiness as the past few have been, so I figured if I push out (exorcise, if you will) a few of the remarks I've been wanting to make about Mrs. Dalloway at the start of this post, I won't be as cynical in the rest of it. So, without further ado, I present:

Five analogies for trying to read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

1. Eating a raw potato without chewing

2. Trying to find buried treasure with the wrong treasure map

3. Looking for hay in a needlestack 

4. Listening to Rebecca Black's "Friday" on loop for 24 hours

5. Bailing out Lake Superior with a teaspoon

Ha-ha-ha. And one more thing: this book has no chapters. Seriously? I get the whole "let's break convention!" mindset, but listen--sometimes rules and standards are there for a reason. They're there because they work. They're there because people like them. I see absolutely zero reason to break convention for the sake of breaking convention, and I've touched on that before in my blog post about Postmodernism. Long story short: if you're going to write a book, please put chapters in it. Don't be Virginia Woolf. 

Phew. Okay, hopefully that got some of it out of me. We'll see.

At any rate.. I've gotta say, Woolf has really outdone herself with this "Peter Walsh" character. This man is a rollercoaster of empathy and disdain. He seems like a pretty okay guy for the first couple [units of measurement that we lack because Virginia Woolf is above using chapters]. Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway rejects his marriage proposal, and that's harsh--I get that. I can empathize. He's a poor soul who's been rejected by the love of his life. That hurts! But then things get weird. 

"How [Peter] scolded her! How they argued! She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said."

Peter, buddy, once you get rejected, the acceptable discourse isn't to go off on the lady that rejected you. We pick up and move on--and that's something Peter can't do, evidently. But the above scene is just a flashback, and knowing Woolf, it might just be a dream. The story moves forward, and Peter goes off to India gets his own girlfriend. Things seem to have worked out, right? Maybe Peter got over Clarissa, right? Nope. Definitely not. Peter, not having talked to Clarissa in--from what I gather--quite a few years, shows up at Clarissa's doorstep to have a lovely discussion about how he's getting married to his pretty girlfriend from India and she's got kids and it's gonna be great. Alright Peter, we get it, Clarissa rejected you. You want to get back at her. I can still sort of empathize. But then things get weirder. 

"[Clarissa] cried to herself in irrepressible irritation; it was his silly unconventionality, his weakness; his lack of the ghost of a notion what any one else was feeling that annoyed her, had always annoyed her; and now at his age, how silly! Know all that, Peter thought; I know what I'm up against, he thought, running his finger along the blade of his knife, Clarissa and all the rest of them; but I'll show Clarissa—and then to his utter surprise, suddenly thrown by those uncontrollable forces thrown through the air, he burst into tears; wept; wept without the least shame, sitting on the sofa, the tears running down his cheeks."

For those of you who don't speak Dalloway: Clarissa and Peter are having a delightfully awkward discussion about Peter's life with lots of unspoken tension. There's soap opera-esque mental exclamations and everything. It's great. And then Peter straight up bursts into tears. Sorry, what? That's right--Peter cries. This isn't the only time this happens, by the way. Peter randomly turning on the waterworks is a pretty typical occurrence in Mrs. Dalloway. 

Well, Peter, you've wholeheartedly emasculated yourself in front of the love of your life. How's it feel? It probably can't get any weirder than this. 

"And Clarissa had leant forward, taken [Peter's] hand, drawn him to her, kissed him,—actually had felt his face on hers before she could down the brandishing of silver flashing—plumes like pampas grass in a tropic gale in her breast, which, subsiding, left her holding his hand, patting his knee and, feeling as she sat back extraordinarily at her ease with him and light-hearted, all in a clap it came over her, If I had married him, this gaiety would have been mine all day!"

You have got to be kidding me. The thing that wins over Clarissa Dalloway's heart is Peter showing up at her doorstep, having a tier 10 awkward conversation, and then bursting into tears? Clash of the melodramatic titans. You'd think at least one of them would do something normal, but nope, it's an endless exchange of histrionic one-upping. Then, after another painfully awkward exchange with Clarissa's daughter, Peter runs away, mentally berating Clarissa for being Clarissa. 

Was I lying when I said rollercoaster of empathy and disdain? And it gets weirder! One of the things I've failed to mention regarding Peter is that he has a neurotic tendency to finger his pocket knife whenever he's deep in thought. Don't even get me started on that--what really matters is what happens after Peter runs out of Clarissa's house. For brevity's sake: He finds a random girl, stealthily walks behind her, fantasizes about her while fingering his pocket knife. Yeah, you read that right. Let's recap--Peter gets rejected by the love of his life, shows up at her doorstep a decade later, talks for a few minutes, bursts into tears, runs away, and goes on a voyeuristic rampage behind a random girl. 

Wow. I never thought I'd say someone could outdo Hemingway after what I went through in A Farewell to Arms, but if anyone has even come close, it's Ms. Woolf. The reading I've done stops at around here, so I can only imagine how much stranger this book gets given that I'm only 25% done with it. If Virginia's plan was to immerse me in melodrama and keep me reading through non sequiturs, she's done a pretty good job. I am reading the book, after all. It's interesting, in a bad reality TV sort of way. 

Phew! I guess I had more snark in me than I'd accounted for. Oh well.

An Ode To Hemingway

"The mountain that was beyond the valley and the hillside where the chestnut forest grew was captured and there were victories beyond the plain on the plateau to the south and we crossed a river in August and lived in a house in Gorizia that had a fountain and many thick shady trees in a walled garden and a wistaria vine purple on the side of the house."

Ernest Hemingway is the only author I know who can use three weak verbs in a 68 word sentence and still be considered a "good" writer. That, and either he lived in a dark age before the comma was invented, or nobody bothered to tell him that there is indeed a literary device used to denote pauses mid-speech. If I had a dollar for every time Hemingway used a comma in A Farewell To Arms, I'd have roughly 75 cents. If I had a nickel for every time he used a weak verb, Bill Gates would have some serious competition.

Hyperbole aside, I don't think Hemingway is that bad. Thus far in A Farewell To Arms, I have wholeheartedly enjoyed a few sections where Hemingway details the events, thoughts, and psychological what-nots between Henry and Catherine. The biggest problem for me is that those enjoyable passages are sandwiched in between chapter-thick packing peanuts of bland, bland description. I'm fully aware of the Hemingway iceberg analogy that I'm supposed to keep on tap whenever I'm reading Ernie, but I have some pretty intrinsic disagreements with that concept.

"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water."

Okay, the idea seems elegant on the surface. Next time I get a C+ on a research paper, I'm going to tell my professor that I know so much about what I write, that I purposely omit key points, and really, the fault lies with him not being a perceptive enough reader. I'm sure that'll go over great. I simply don't see the virtue in deliberately omitting important things in your writing, for the express purpose of 'dignity'. If I'm going to read a book, I don't want to have to go through a motif-mapping section where I draw a bunch of red lines all over the paper, make a note every time the author uses the word "bedsheet" and finally unlock my golden key, only to realize the story about a sailor and his wife is actually an allegory for the merits of communism. To me, that's just silly.

Although, again, I give Ernie a little too much flack. We're talking about the opposite ends of two writing extremes here: One is Hemingway--the author who describes sparingly, leaving breadcrumb clues so you can follow his trail of repetition and weak verbs all the way to the treasure chest at the end of the book. The other is Dafoe, who spends 5 goddamn chapters talking about the awesome rowboat he made. If Hemingway is an iceberg, then Dafoe is Snooki, because there is nothing below the surface. I can definitively say that I'm enjoying Ernie much more than I enjoyed Dafoe--but is there no middle ground?

The answer to that question is obviously "yes", because I'm in a class where we deliberately read and analyze different styles of novels, and the only way to accurately represent them is by providing stark contrasts between various eras. But, hey, it's more fun on my part to complain about being submerged to my cheekbones in weak verbs. 

So, while I do think Hemingway's style sets an odd precedent for readers and writers, I think it's a valid precedent, because I'm sure there's someone--probably more than someone--out there who thinks my stuff is worse than Hemingway's. Just ask my past couple English teachers. Ha!

Of Forests, Demons, and Creepy Little Children

A dark, mystical forest, resting on the fine line between reality and the "other" side. Shameful adulteresses meet under the cover of night, to discuss plans with their lovers. The trees wield the eyes and ears of "the black man", and terrifyingly precognizant children make startlingly accurate predictions.

If all this sounds familiar to you, you're probably really into grade-B horror movies, or you've read The Scarlet Letter.

The forest on the edge of town presents some interesting food for thought in The Scarlet Letter. Many a plot point occur within it's grasp. Hester, for whatever masochistic reason,  decides to maintain residence near Boston, in a cottage just next to the forest. But the closer one gets to the forest is directly proportional to the concentration of grade-B-horror-movie level happenings: take it from Hawthorne.

"A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to [Hester's house]. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange contagious fear."   

Oh my gosh, an old abandoned cottage occupied by a barren, harsh, ostracized woman, where children creep near to the windows, peek in, scream, and run away in fear? Color me terrified. If that doesn't scream grade-B horror movie, I don't know what does.

...Well, I take that back. You know what else does? Creepy clairvoyant little girls.

"‘Mother,’ said little Pearl, ‘the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me—for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!’"

Yeah. If I were Hester, I'd be worried about my kid, too. Especially the way Pearl seems perpetually unfazed by how terrifying her cognizance is. Pearl is an innocent object--a small child--and as such, the realizations that she makes about her mother are unblemished by society, and any preconceived definitions that someone who isn't a three-year-old might have. Thus, when she says something that requires either superhuman level comprehension, or prior knowledge, it's really creepy.

"‘Come, my child!’ said Hester, looking about her from the spot where Pearl had stood still in the sunshine—‘we will sit down a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves.’
‘I am not aweary, mother,’ replied the little girl. ‘But you may sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile.’
‘A story, child!’ said Hester. ‘And about what?’
‘Oh, a story about the Black Man,’ answered Pearl, taking hold of her mother’s gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into her face.
‘How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood; and then he sets his mark on their bosoms. Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother?’"

"The Black Man", in this case, means Satan.
That passage just got a whole lot creepier, didn't it? Especially when Hester acknowledges that the Scarlet Letter is the Black Man's mark, and that she did indeed meet him.

All of these passages occur in the forest, just outside Boston. The forest is a place detached from Puritan society--despite being so close to Boston, the ideals change so drastically inside it. It's a mystical, surreal landscape, that overturns, and exposes the underlying flaws of Puritan society.  Dimmesdale is able to meet with Hester to discuss their relationship, something that would invariably get them killed, or at least jailed, if they were to do it in public. The Puritans believe their methods of punishing Hester to be good for her, and an improvement to her character, for both the good of their community and Hester herself. But in reality, Hester hates it. It not only causes her extreme pain, but that pain is shared by Dimmesdale, because he cannot openly acknowledge their sin. Thus, they hide in the forest, alone and ashamed, to reconcile each other about the wrongs brought upon them. Pearl, however, does not realize how the forest is different from Boston. She frequently berates Dimmesdale for not publicly recognizing them as a family, because she doesn't understand that there is a clear line between the quasi-surreal forest, and the early Puritan society in Boston. Despite her spot-on psychic accuracy, she is unable to parse basic social norms.

It's interesting, how the horrifying concept of an innocent psychic child personifying the remorse we all feel for our sins, has seeped it's way even into today's media. Hawthorne was able to tap into some basal human fear that hasn't eroded despite 300 years of perpetuation. It's no secret that a hypnagogic landscape--where closed doors open, shadows move, and things change--and unnaturally aware children are staples of, well, grade-B horror movies.

 In a Noble-Savage-esque way, Pearl is both an object for comparison, and the lens that we use to compare. Pearl is unabashed by society--so the observations she makes about Hester are true and pure, despite what her messages might connotate. But just as well, Pearl herself is a personified Scarlet letter--she is at the same time Hester's shame, for committing adultery, but also her love for Dimmesdale, and the result of that. It is, indeed, Pearl's namesake: she's the treasure that Hester gave everything for. And that's enough dichotomy for 4 PM on a Saturday.