26 Jan Read Abraham Lincoln’s speech

American Literature

Week 4 Discussion

DQ1 The Scarlet Letter

Instructions

Nathaniel Hawthorne is the “father of the short story” in American Literature. One of the rites of passage in an American education is reading The Scarlet Letter and writing a paper on it. The novel has psychological intensity and complexity, exemplified by color motifs (red, black), and formal symmetries (three scaffold scenes, daylight, midnight) and the scarlet “A”. Read The Scarlet Letter beginning on p. 425 and respond to the below questions in a discussion.

Discuss:

In Chapter II, Hawthorne writes of the women by the prison door: “There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day.” If one of the themes of the novel is that the status and power of women has changed for the good over the intervening two hundred years, what is he implying in the above observation?

How does this remark, and other portraits of women in the book, complicate our thinking about the status of women, then and now?

DQ2 Abraham Lincoln’s Speech to the Republican State Convention

Instructions

Read Abraham Lincoln’s speech given at the close of the “Republican State Convention in 1858”. It is famous for the lines: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

In your own words, after you read the speech, compare Lincoln’s words to today’s political climate. Do you see how historical literature can be relevant today, in the 21st century? While Lincoln refers to African slaves, the US is fighting a “war” against slavery today, but it is called “human trafficking”. Sometimes situations and cultures do not change very much.

Post your response in the discussion thread, and respond to one classmate’s post.