Chapters 1-4

I was initially caught off guard by the start of the novel. The novel was first published in 1850, over a hundred fifty years ago, and as such utilizes a plethora of both vocabulary and grammar structures that are no longer used in modern writing. As a result, I spent the first couple pages trying to adjust to the different style and attempting to derive the intended meaning from the text. By the end of the reading I was better able to understand what was being said and I was more capable of analyzing what I was reading.

It was clearly evident over the course of this reading that through the novel, Nathaniel Hawthorne is trying to direct criticism toward Puritan beliefs. In the first chapter of the novel, Hawthorne points out the Puritan legend surrounding the existence of the rose bush outside the door of the prison. He describes that the legend goes that the “[bush] had sprung up under the footsteps of  the sainted Anne Hutchinson”, who was banished to Rhode Island for preaching Antinomianism, “as she entered the prison-door” (Hawthorne 46). However, he also mentions that it is entirely possible that the bush may have simply survived past the death of the rest of the wilderness that originally surrounded it but that the true history of the bush would not be debated in the novel. Hawthorne is criticizing that with simple common sense it could be determined that the bush had just never been removed with the rest of the forest and had not appeared out of the earth following the footsteps of a woman. Additionally, Hawthorne mocks how easily the town is willing to punish and execute criminals of insignificant crimes. In his description of the crowd gathered around the prison, Hawthorne provides a couple examples of reasons people could be punished. These include:

“It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man’s fire-water had made riotous about the streets, was to be riven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows” (Hawthorne 47).

It is apparent in each of these cases that Hawthorne thought these disciplines were extreme and unfitting of the offenses committed. Most of these offenses involve the merging of religion and law and it becomes clear that Hawthorne does not condone this relationship between the two. Hawthorne’s criticisms of Puritan beliefs are evident in his portrayal of the rose bush and the mixture of law and religion as examples of the flaws in Puritan customs.

The criticism of the beliefs of a society for the flaws in their culture is evident today in the debate over the necessity of vaccinating all children. Many adults lately have been choosing not to vaccinate their children for various viruses and as a result are putting themselves and others at risk by being a potential host for a multitude of illnesses. The flaw in this philosophy is that science has proven that vaccines are extremely effective and can create immunity to many viruses with very high success rates. However, the refusal of some parents to permit their children to receive vaccines has led to the first measles outbreak in the United States in more than a decade with 102 cases reported in January of this year. Simply allowing their children to receive the vaccine could prevent many of these cases but due to the parents’ beliefs they are refusing. This relates to how there was similarly little logic in some of the Puritan beliefs and yet the Puritans still went about their lives in the same manner. People’s inability to adapt to changing beliefs for the good of themselves and others is just as prominent nowadays as it was back in the 1800s.