Sunday, September 15, 2013

According to Hawthorne, what are the first two places allotted for in any new community in "Scarlet Letter"?

According to Hawthorne, the first two places allotted for in any new community are a cemetery and a prison. 

In the context of the early days of colonial New England, Hawthorne says,

"The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a protion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison".

The practical reality of having to account early on for death and crime in any plan for community establishment is a stark testimony to the inescapability of "human frailty and sorrow" (Chapter 1).

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