Porphyria: A Hallucination

            Robert Browning’s poem “Porphyria’s Lover” is one of two poems in Browning’s “Madhouse Cells” monologues that emphasized the fact that the speaker is not of the right state of mind. In the case of the speaker of “Porphyria’s Lover,” he is suffering from an acute porphyria attack which causes him to hallucinate and generally lose contact with reality. All of the speaker’s actions and what he sees in the poem therefore are influenced by his disease.

            According to the article “Psychiatric complications of a late diagnosis of acute porphyria in an affected male,” by Gabriela Elizondo Cárdenas et al., “[a]cute porphyrias are a group of genetic disorders” (Cárdenas et al 366). Acute porphyria, as described in the article, has multiple symptoms such as: nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, “distention, constipation, or diarrhea. Other symptoms are insomnia, tachycardia, hypertension, seizures, hallucinations, depression, irritability, anxiety, and other acute psychiatric symptoms” which can be seen in attacks (Cárdenas et al 367). There are signs of the speaker having an acute porphyria attack starting in the very beginning of the poem. The speaker starts by personifying the storm outside in saying “The sullen wind was soon awake, / It tore the elm-tops down for spite, / and did the worst to vex the lake” (Browning 713 lines 2-4). His personification of the storm outside is the first sign of his hallucinating, a symptom of acute porphyria shown in attacks. A symptom that goes along with his hallucinating in this section is also constipation. The line “and did the worst to vex the lake” hints at a disturbance of the speaker’s stomach acids, causing constipation and also abdominal pain, more signs of an attack (Browning 713 line 4).

            Another symptom that the speaker has in the beginning of the poem is irritability and depression, which is seen mostly through his reaction, or lack thereof, when Porphyria walks through the door. His irritability and depression is shown in the use of the description “cheerless” in line eight when talking about the grate near the fireplace when Porphyria fixed the fire. His irritability is also shown through his lack of reaction towards her in lines thirteen to twenty-one as she sits on his lap and “murmur[s] how she loved [him]” (Browning 713 line 21). His lack of response to her at this point shows an irritation or annoyance that he has with her and her freedom from him.

Along with being irritable, the description of Porphyria in the beginning of the poem hints at the speaker’s nausea, something that can be defined as loathing or revulsion towards something. This sense of nausea or revulsion that the speaker has towards Porphyria can be seen in the lines 11-13: “Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,/ And laid her soiled gloves by, untied/ Her hat and let the damp hair fall,” (Browning 713 lines 11-13). The use of the wording “soiled gloves” alludes to the idea of fallen women, those who have sex outside of marriage, which would be displeasing to the speaker since he wants her for himself. The image of Porphyria letting down her hair also causes repulsion in the speaker, as loose hairs is mostly associated with whores in the time period, if a woman did not have her hair tied back she was seen as being impure, which the speaker also hints that she was not pure in line 36 when he describes at a certain moment that she was pure and that he needed to do something to keep her that way.

            Browning also uses a lot of color play and very colorful, per se, emotional diction right before the speaker decided to strangle Porphyria. First, Porphyria’s hair is described as yellow in color, which is typically associated with sunshine and happiness. The interesting fact with Porphyria’s hair being yellow and the disease porphyria is that in some cases people with the disease, sunshine can “cause lesions on sun-exposed skin” (Cárdenas et al 367). Lesions can generally be found in an area of damaged skin through either injury or disease. In the case of strangulation, which the speaker uses to kill Porphyria, lesions can be left in the damaged skin tissue. With the use of Porphyria’s yellow hair, a color directly associated with sunlight that can cause lesions on people who have porphyria, the speaker shows a third symptom of being under the influence and having the disease.

            The color green has a direct association with nausea and sickness overall. The interesting idea with the color green in this poem starts with Browning’s use of the word “yellow” to describe Porphyria’s hair color rather than just calling it blonde. Her yellow hair mixed with the fact that she emerges from a storm outside into the cabin, which water is generally associated with the color blue creates the color green and subtly hinting at the nausea and sickness that the speaker has. The projection of the color green and the link to nausea is the cause of Porphyria’s death, which can be described as a symptom as well. Vomiting is another symptom of an acute porphyria attack, and also something that can be caused by nausea. In the sense of the definition of vomiting being “to eject violently or abundantly” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the speaker’s loathing or nausea towards Porphyria causes him to vomit or “eject violently” (“Vomit”).

            Another color that is present through the diction of the poem is the color red. One way in which the color red is associated directly with the speaker’s acute porphyria attack is in the wording in line 28, “one so pale” where paleness generally is linked to a loss of blood and also a sign of sickness before someone vomits. Red is also connected to the poem in the multiple uses of the word “passion”, “heart”, and the overall action of the speaker killing Porphyria. For example, before strangling Porphyria, the speaker describes her as “Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor,/ To set its struggling passion free” (Browning 713 lines 22-23). The color red in the sense of the disease also relates to the poem in the symptoms of tachycardia and hypertension. The connection of a faster-then-normal heart beat and high blood pressure ties in with Porphyria’s death, as through strangulation both of these symptoms are present. Not only would Porphyria be experiencing these symptoms as she is being strangled but arguably the speaker would experience the same symptoms more as a result of adrenaline as Porphyria might have fought back, causing his heart rate to increase and his blood pressure to rise in the struggle.

The sense of pride that the speaker suggests gets in the way of Porphyria and his loves in the lines: “From pride, and vainer ties dissever,/ And give herself to me forever” has a connection to the color red in significance to Porphyria’s death and the disease of the speaker (Browning 713 lines 24-25). Porphyria is a word derived from the Greek work porphyra, which means a purple pigment. Purple directly relates to lines twenty-four and twenty-five in the fact that the color is associated with pride and independence, two things which the speaker expresses is getting in the way of them being together. The color purple also connects to the speaker having the disease in the fact that a symptom of the disease is purple urine or feces. The speaker’s killing Porphyria was not only in a sense, him vomiting, but also a release of constipation, the feces in the sense, was Porphyria herself as he released the binds of her hair around her neck after strangling her.

            A major symptom that the speaker had while and after strangling Porphyria is psychosis. Psychosis is generally a loss of contact with reality, which can be associated with delusions which is basically having false ideas about what is taking place or who someone is. This symptom is most obviously something that starts to be noticeable in line 36 where the speaker says “That moment she was mine, mine, fair” (Browning 713 line 36). Psychosis is shown in the line through the speaker’s repetition of the word “mine”, which is only the first instance that the speaker repeats himself. When strangling Porphyria, the speaker says “No pain felt she;/ I am quite sure she felt no pain”, again repeating himself (Browning 713 lines 41-42). The repetition of what he thinks/says is a general example of people who are seen as not in the right mind, or otherwise psychotic. The overall fact that the poem is expressed in a monologue is also something that might suggest psychosis. The speaker either might be confessing his deeds to someone, but perhaps more likely in his state is that he is talking to himself about the night, at a loss for reality. His state of psychosis can also be seen in the fact that he is seen laughing as he opens the eyes of his dead lover in line 45 of the poem.

            Hallucination comes back in as a major symptom of the speaker’s having porphyria and going through an acute porphyria attack in the end of the poem when he describes how he acts around his Lover’s dead body. The main put off to the fact that the speaker is hallucinating is the fact that he is seeing things that are not there. In line 47-48 it says “About her neck; her cheek once more/ Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss” which of course is a hallucination because Porphyria is unable to blush under his kiss because she is dead (Browning 713-714 lines 47-48). The speaker’s act of lying with Porphyria’s body shows him as believing she is still alive and willing to be there with them though the reader knows that the speaker just killed her, which is another bit of evidence for the speaker’s hallucinations.

A victim of a porphyria attack might also experience seizures. In the speaker’s killing of Porphyria, his use of strangulation would cause her body to jerk in a manner that could also be considered a seizure without the strangulation. The manner in which her body and muscles would spasm as a result of the speaker strangling her could also be arguably linked to an anxiety attack, anxiety being another symptom of an acute porphyria attack. The jerking of Porphyria’s body also gives the image of the speaker’s retching, an attempt to vomit, or eject violently in the sense of the word used previously, as his vomiting is directly linked to his strangling Porphyria. Seizures and anxiety attacks generally lead to muscle weakness, again, another symptom of an attack. Muscle weakness is alluded to at least three times in the poem. The first time is when Porphyria made the speaker put his arm around her waist. The second time can be seen in the line “Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor,” (Browning 713 line 22). The last part of the poem that gives the impression that the speaker is experiencing muscle weakness is the ending of the poem where the speaker and Porphyria’s corpse sit together and “have not stirred” all night (Browning 714 line 59).

Near the end of the poem, the speaker’s detachment with reality can be seen more thoroughly and Browning gives hints to whether or not any of what happened is real. The speaker’s fight with reality can be seen in line 55, where he says “And I, its love, am gained instead!” (Browning 714 line 55). The use of the word “its” in reference to Porphyria, and in the lack of use of gender or any other wording that would otherwise refer to her as being human is a hint that perhaps there was no woman at all. He uses the word “it” before this in lines 53-54 as well, as the speaker claims that Porphyria is with him at this point by her own free will and that he has rid her of all things he previously scorned in the beginning of the poem. The switch between the use of the word “it” and “she” or “her” shows how in and out of reality the speaker is and also hints at the fact that the speaker might not have killed anyone, but rather it was all a hallucination, a result of the battle of the disease in his mind, a disease with the very same name as the woman, Porphyria.

In the subtle hints that Browning uses to tell the reader that the speaker did not kill anyone, and in fact, there was no woman named Porphyria, he shows how the speaker is affected by a disease and how an acute porphyria attack makes him hallucinate and believe that he killed a woman. The detachment from reality shown in the ending’s mixed use of “it” and “she” in reference to Porphyria shows that the whole poem was merely a result of the speaker’s attack, a battle with his illness. At the end of the poem, the speaker says: “And thus we sit together now,/ And all night long we have not stirred,” which alludes, as previously discussed, to muscle weakness, most likely a result to a seizure or anxiety attack that the speaker had as a result of his illness (Browning 714 lines 58-59). The lines not only suggest that the speaker had a seizure or an anxiety attack, but also that he was sitting at the end of a battle with his disease under control for the time being, rather than the body of a woman. Therefore, having not actually murdered a woman by the name of Porphyria, the line “And yet God has not said a word!” goes along with the idea of a crisis of faith not in the sense that he got away with murder, but that the disease the speaker is battling causes him pain and God has done nothing about it, that he has not healed him.

           

Works Cited

"Vomit." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2015.

Browning, Robert. "Porphyria’s Lover." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 1785-2013. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W.W.  Norton, 2013. 713-14. Print.

Cárdenas, Gabriela Elizondo, et al. "Psychiatric Complications of a Late Diagnosis of Acute Porphyria in an Affected Male." Salud Mental 32.5 (2009): 365-369. MLA. Web. 2 Mar. 2015.

The Complexities of School Shootings in America

The first known school shooting in the United was the Pontiac's Rebellion school massacre on July 26, 1764 near Greencastle, Pennsylvania. Four American Indians went into a schoolhouse and shot and killed the schoolmaster, following, they killed nine or ten children (reports vary on this number), and only one of the children in the school survived (“List of School Shootings in the United States”). After the school shooting in 1764, there have been hundreds more like it in the United States. The problem that society and analysts are having today is with identifying the cause of school shootings. Generally, analysts and various activist groups argue for one cause of these massacres of students, which is where finding a way to prevent the acts becomes a hard equation to solve. School shootings are much more complex than any one cause of violent entertainment, gun laws, or mental illness, rather it is a combination of different reasons that these events happen.

Various causes have been tossed around between different studies about school shootings, some of which can be excused as mere blaming out of discomfort towards new sources of media entertainment. Other single-cause explanations tend to be arguments made by activist groups who merely take the example of a school shooting and explain how the event proves that something needs to be solved about their particular complaint. One example of this is how after the Columbine school shooting in 1999, some people blamed violent video games as the cause of the shooting. They also blamed Marilyn Manson in particular for his ‘dangerous’ music style—rock music. In the article “'Bowling For Columbine' Still Has Some Frightening Lessons For Our Country” by Erin Fuchs, she explains that Michael Moore, the producer of the documentary Bowling for Columbine argued that “[i]f the public is going to blame rock music or video games for the Columbine massacre,…it might as well blame bowling – the last thing teen gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did before they shot up their school” (Fuchs). Even though violent video games and rock music are much more widely accepted by the American culture in the years after the Columbine shooting, Marilyn Manson is still arguable someone that some people associate with school shootings. In Simon Lindgren’s article “YouTube Gunmen? Mapping Participatory Media Discourse on School Shooting Videos,” he shows through his analysis of Google search trends that  “[s]earch activity relating to gun control and Marilyn Manson increases when school shootings take place, and declines within around five or six days” (Lindgren 126). Therefore, even though rock music like the kind that Marilyn Manson is known for is not so blatantly said to be a cause of school shootings, the people who see a relation of the two are still in significant number according to Google search trends.

Gun ownership laws are arguably one of the largest blames for school shootings by people today. On March 13, 1996 in the city of Dunblane, Scotland, a fourty-three year old man named Thomas Hamilton killed sixteen children between the ages of five and six, their teacher, and injured two other teachers before committing suicide. In the news article by CNN, “Dunblane: How UK school massacre led to tighter gun control” by Peter Wilkinson it says that “[w]ithin a year and a half of the Dunblane massacre, UK lawmakers had passed a ban on the private ownership of all handguns in mainland Britain” and that there was a reprieve, “resulting in the surrender of thousands of firearms and rounds of ammunition” (Wilkinson). Since the ban on handguns, there have been no other school shootings in the areas where the gun law took effect.

The United States, unlike England, does not have laws restricting all citizens from owning guns. Currently, the U.S. has the leading amount of gun ownership at approximately 270,000,000 guns owned by civilians (Rogers). According to the blogpost “Inconvenient Truth: Violent Crime Rate in the Gun-Free UK Is 800% of the Heavily Armed US” by Steven Goddard, Goddard shows through FBI and UK government websites that in 2012, there were 1.2 million violent crimes in the US versus the UK that had 1.94 million violent crimes in the same year, pointing out that despite the fact that the UK is gun-free, they are more violent than the leading gun owning country in the world (Goddard). Criminologist Peter Squires in the CNN article about the Dunblane shooting says: “[a]ny weapon can be misused in a crime. Gun control will never be a complete solution to events like the mass shooting we saw in Connecticut…” (Wilkinson). Since the UK is gun-free and had more violent crime than the U.S. in 2012, it goes to show that gun laws will not fix all our problems and therefore is not the only cause or solution to preventing future school shootings in America.

In the case of Elliot Rodger, who shot and killed six, and injured thirteen people because women at his college—University of California Santa Barbara—would not date or have sex with him, different advocate groups used  the shooting to benefit their own arguments. In Mark Manson’s article “How We All Miss the Point on School Shootings,” he points out that after the Santa Barbara shooting, gun control advocates argued for stricter gun laws, mental health officials argued for better health care, feminists argued for more awareness for violence against women, and social justice advocates used it to talk against white male entitlement despite the fact that Elliot Rodger was mixed race (Manson). Manson’s article further explains how the blames that people place on the cause of school shootings leads to arguments and gets the country no closer to a decline in these shooting incidents, that while everyone is arguing for their cause, a potential shooter might be out there “researching guns and bombs and mapping out schools and recording videos and thinking every day about the anger and hate he feels for this world. And no one is paying attention to him” (Manson). Instead of listening and paying attention to the potential shooters, people are too busy trying to fix other problems in the world, ones they believe in the most. Meanwhile, the amount of school shootings in America is increasing drastically every year.

According to the FBI, mass shootings—killing four or more people—happen on average every two weeks in the US (Manson). Manson says that these frequent mass shootings are not heard about very often because most are easily explainable. School shootings are four percent of all mass shootings according to Manson’s article, and they dominate news media for a number of reasons that Manson points out. The reasons that school shootings are publicized more on the media than any other mass shooting is because they happen in public locations that are generally believed to be safe, the victims in the shootings are targeted and killed at random, the victims are innocent bystanders and often enough, children, the killers often leave behind a lot of material about themselves for the media to share to the public, and the perpetrator and victims are typically upper-middle class, white and privileged (Manson). The appeal of news media to school shootings is because the events and the people involved are very complex and can catch the attention of the public for quite some amount of time.

According to Manson’s article, an FBI study on school shooters had results that showed that school shootings are not a result of some ‘crazy’ person suddenly ‘snapping’ or ‘going off the deep end’ (Manson). In several different studies and articles authors write that these school shooters take the time to plan the attack on the school for months and sometimes years on end before they actually attack the school. Not only do these shooters plan their attack for a long time, but they also “almost always ‘leak’ information about the attack beforehand, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes in incredibly obvious ways” (Manson). Some ways in which these shooters ‘leak’ the information about their future attack on their schools through casual talking with friends and also some of their actions. Antonio Preti’s article “School Shooting as a Culturally Enforced Way of Expressing Suicidal Hostile Intentions,” he states that “[m]ore than 50 percent of school shooting events were preceded by some action that might have warned of the potential for impending violence” (Preti 546). In the cases of Eric Harris—one of the Columbine shooters—and Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara shooter, “[b]oth put their intentions and their angry rants up on the web for everyone to see” (Manson). Eric Harris left various journals and videos for the media to publicize. Elliot Rodger posted various YouTube videos about his hatred of couples and blond girls who rejected him and his plans to punish those who went to his college. In Elliot Rodger’s last video, the one just a few hours before the shooting, it begins with Elliot stating: “[t]his is my last video. It all has come to this” (News Now, “Elliot Rodgers Retribution – The Last Video”). Elliot continues by saying that the ‘day of retribution’ is tomorrow—the day that he did in fact kill six people, and injure thirteen before killing himself. He described his plans in the video stating: “[o]n the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck up blonde slut I see inside there” (News Now, “Elliot Rodgers Retribution – The Last Video”).  He continued the video with talks of killing guys that had lived a better life than him and then a plan to kill everyone he sees on the streets of the town after he finished the first two parts of his plan. His use of YouTube to publicize his hatred towards the people of his college—blond women in particular—was his own way of leaking his plans out to the public before he attacked, a chance to stop the act, and perhaps the fact that no one did stop it before it happened was another sense of achievement for him.

Eric Harris and Elliot Rodger were by far not the only school shooters who left behind information about their plans or publicized and/or leaked their plans before they attacked their schools. The Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho emailed NBC his confession video along with 20 or so photographs of himself, most of which he was holding a variety of weapons. Adam Lanza, who killed approximately 26 students and teachers was a part of various forums online and many of his posts hinted to his reasons and planning of the Newtown shooting. In Jesse Singal’s article “Why Kids Shoot Up High Schools, Why They Only Do So Outside of Big Cities, and How to Stop Them” the author uses the book Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings by Katherine Newman as a source to back up his arguments about school shootings. In arguing that school shootings are very rarely a surprise, he quotes Newman in saying: “‘What was striking to me was that very often the kids don’t need the police to tell them who did this [after a shooting]. Some of them don’t come to school that day, because they were afraid of something coming’” (Newman qtd. in Singal). Kids often pick up on the rumors and overhear shooters talk about their plans casually with friends so they can generally put two and two together after an attack occurs. The reason however, that students do not speak up which is “partly because the threats are ‘coming from someone who’s been saying crazy things for years. Because it’s the last act, not the first act, they’ve been trying to get attention for a long time,’ and therefore it’s hard to know how seriously to take their talk of violence” (Newman qtd. in Singal). Shooters, therefore, generally leak information on their plans to attack a school, and since the leaking of this information is continuous, people tend to not believe them until it is too late, until the student starts to open fire on his classmates.

News media is generally relied on to bring information to the public on major events that have happened around the world, however, in the case of school shootings, it can also be used as a weapon and a way to motivate potential criminals. Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters, used news media as a platform to cause fear. Mark Manson, in his article mentioned previously on how people miss the point of school shootings says that “[Eric] would not kill jocks or preps, he would kill indiscriminately, because that’s what caused the most fear and got the most attention” (Manson). Media was Eric’s main weapon in his act, and his attempts for attention worked, as there was 24 hour coverage of the shooting for weeks on end. In reference to Eric Harris’s Journal, Manson says “[i]t’s not about the guns. It’s about the television. The films. The fame. The revolution” (Manson). Eric Harris left behind various journals and videos about his planning and why he wanted to attack his school, and for him, that was just another way to lure media in and cause fear to the public.

Other shooters left similar evidence behind of their plans to attack their school as well. Left behind material, according to Antonio Preti, “indicate[s] that school-shooting perpetrators desire that other people understand their reasons” (Preti 547). In the cases of Elliot Rodger and Virginia Tech Shooter, Cho, the videos they left behind were more of a way to justify their actions rather than a pure want to cause fear like Eric Harris had. Elliot Rodger, in his last YouTube video before the shooting tried to justify his actions by saying: “You [the girls that denied him sex at his college] denied me a happy life and in turn I will deny all of you life” and “It’s only fair” (News Now, “Elliot Rodgers Retribution – The Last Video”).  Cho left behind a similar confession video, which he emailed to NBC. In his video, Cho said: “you had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours” (Woodytyler’s Channel, “Virginia Tech Shooting Confession Video). The actual targeted ‘you’ that Cho referred to in his video was not specified like Elliot’s confession video was, but both shooters still used videos as a means of leaving material behind to justify their actions of mass murder.

As news media is becoming more widely watched and turned to for updates on what is happening in the world, copycat killers are becoming more of an issue. According to Antonio Preti in his article “School Shooting as a Culturally Enforced Way of Expressing Suicidal Hostile Attentions,” he states: “Copycat crimes were reported to follow violent episodes that received wide coverage in the media” (Preti 546). In the part of his article about copycat crimes, Preti talks about the influence of media on potential criminals and says that “[c]oncerns have been raised on the chance that sensational publicity about a violent crime or suicide may cause an increase in similar violent behavior” (Preti 546). Copycat crimes can arguably be seen clearly influencing different school shootings in particular and it can be argued that not only do other crimes influence school shootings but they also influence the amount of school shootings and the fact that they have become increasingly more common in suburban schools.

Eric Harris, again, one of the Columbine school shooters, was a copycat criminal himself. In Mark Manson’s article he explains how Harris was obsessed with the bombings of the Oklahoma City federal buildings which killed 168 people and injured another 600. “Eric wanted to top that[,]” Manson explains in his article. The argued copycat shooting, where the inspiration was a bombing of federal buildings that killed over a hundred people, was the source of copycats as well. The Columbine shooting was televised for weeks on end, and “[i]n the four weeks immediately after the Columbine incident,…up to 350 students were arrested in the United States on charges of having raised some kind of threat against a school” (Preti 546). The evidence that the Columbine shooting was the cause of this increase in student threats against school is obvious. The Columbine shooting can also be argued to influence school shooters to this day as well. In Simon Lindgren’s article on YouTube gunmen and school shooting videos, he explains through analyzed data of the comments posted on the original Columbine security video posted on YouTube in 2006, that after a school shooting, there is an increase in comments on the Columbine video (Lindgren 134). The fact that when a school shooting occurs people generally still think of Columbine is a type of copycat killing mindset, not just for the shooter perhaps who attacked his school, but society makes the connection as well.

As years have passed since the Columbine shooting, which at one time was the worst school shooting in the United States, the amount of school shootings happening per year has increased drastically in the last five years. Since news media is not simply going to stop covering school shooting events on television, Antonio Preti argues in his article that to avoid copycat killings “[t]he perpetrator should never be glorified, but neither should he or she be demonized, to avoid glorification by rebellious counter cultures” (Preti 548-549). The constant way that the Columbine school shooting was televised and the two shooters lives were made public can be argued as a way in which news media in 1999 both demonized and unintentionally glorified the two shooters, causing 350 students to make similar threats in just the four weeks after the shooting, as Preti pointed out in his article.

More recently, there has been a shooting that was much worse than the Columbine Shooting. In December of 2012, Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and shot and killed 26 students and teachers. There has been a lot of criticism on how the new media covered the shooting, and it can be argued that Adam Lanza was both made famous per se for it, and he was also demonized by reports where they stated over and over how he killed twenty children. He was demonized with the endless interviews of surviving teachers and parents of students who died and how angry they were at Adam. Lanza was unintentionally glorified with the way that the shooting was covered by news media for so long and how over-eager they were to update the public on new information. Reporters reportedly invaded the Newtown community, knocking on door after door to interview people of the community. In the article “TV Coverage of Sandy Hook Shootings Draws Heavy Criticism: Reporting Considered Invasive, Exploitative and Sensationalized” by Jamshid Ghazi Askar, Rodger Elbert, a film critic,  “proposed that the ongoing onslaught of TV coverage would perpetuate a vicious cycle by helping to trigger future shootings” (Askar). Listing of school shootings in the United States on Wikipedia—for lack of better chronological sourcing—shows that in 2012 there were approximately thirteen school shootings, the last of the year being the Sandy Hook shooting. According to the article “School Shootings in America Since Sandy Hook” on everytown.org, there have been 95 school shooting in America since Sandy Hook. In 2013 there were 36 shootings and in 2014 there have been 59, the last one occurring on December 5^th, 2014 in Claremore Oklahoma (“School Shootings in America Since Sandy Hook”).

In his article “The Sandy Hook Slaughter and CopyCat Killers in a Media Celebrity Society: Analyses and Plans for Action,” Douglas Kellner says:

[t]here is no question but that the media nurture fantasies and influence behavior, sometimes sick and vile ones, and to achieve mental health in our culture requires that we are able to critically analyze and dissect media culture and not let it gain power over us (Kellner).

Kellner then agrees with what Rodger Ebert had said, that the way media outlets portray school shootings causes more harm than good. Especially for a student who is already thinking of harming people at his school, when a school shooting is on the news, the way that the event is talked about for such a long time and the shooter is so thoroughly made a concern, it influences the ‘fantasies’ that the student might have had. Like Eric Harris’s influence of the Oklahoma federal building bombings, many potential shooters are influenced by the information given to them by the news, the was that criminals are portrayed on the news appeals to them, it shows that they will finally get to say whatever they have been trying to say all the while. Ebert quotes himself from something that he said to NBC news in 1999 after the Columbine shooting,     “‘The message is clear to other disturbed kids: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. Kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory’” (Ebert qtd. in Askar ). As of right now, that is exactly what news media is doing, after a shooting incident reporters go on and on about the reasons the shooter attacked his school, who he was, the friends he had, every single dl that might have gone on in the shooter’s life and head is publicized. The way that media portrays school shooters attracts other people who have debated the same act, gives them the motivation to carry the act out, a previous shooter to compete with, to beat like Eric Harris had aimed to do.

            Often enough, school shooters are soon identified to have had a mental illness of some sort after a shooting occurs. Many of the articles previously mentioned have some partial conclusion about the United States needing better mental health care. In Douglas Kellner’s article he says that “[t]o address these problems [of school shootings], we need better mental health facilities and monitoring of troubled individuals, and also of institutions” (Kellner). Other analysts of school shootings come to a similar conclusion, but they also mention that better mental health care will not fix the issue entirely, just as stricter gun laws would also not solve the problem on its own. As Kellner says, “[m]ental illness is a complex phenomenon that has a variety of dimensions and expressions” (Kellner). Mental illness is more than just some issue that some people are born with, a lot of the time people form mental illnesses based of how they are treated by others and/or their surroundings. Since mental illness is not always genetic, it makes for better treatment of the mentally ill not the only suitable solution to stopping the increase of school shootings, and also a solution that cannot stand alone in the fight against school shootings.             

As just stated, better mental health care is not a solution to school shootings that can stand alone. However, often enough people get caught up in the fear of school shootings and name just one cause,  and this “ media panic mode of representation obscure[s] the multitude of social and cultural factors that clearly contribute to the events taking place” (Lindgren 123). The fear that society has for these shootings get in the way of fully realizing that it’s not just gun laws or mental illness or news media that plays a part in school shootings, but it is also something very cultural, and perhaps that is why in America we have so many more school shootings than any other country, it might be because we have an issue with a social or cultural norm in the country.

Kellner, in his article about copycat killers, the effect of media, and the cultural norm of masculinity, he says:

“the cycle of mass shootings throughout 2012 and the past decades suggest that young men are constructing media spectacles to achieve celebrity through attempting to overcome their alienation and failures by turning to weapons and gun culture, and carrying out mass murders” (Kellner).

Kellner explains how the views on masculinity that Americans hold have a major effect on school shooters and why they choose to attack their schools in such a manner. From birth, males in America are generally raised in very strict manners; they must like cars, never play with dolls, and never cry. Boys are raised to be tough in most households, and girls are raised to be more girls. Despite progression in gender equality, as a nation the people of America still raise their children in a manner that is many ways parallel to how each gender has been raised for hundreds of years, the males to be tough and the females to be more gentle and caring. This method of raising children is backfiring on America. Because masculinity has become such a major part of the way boys are taught to act and think, it continues to be a factor throughout their school years and onward. The high need to be masculine can be specifically seen in sports, and Kellner points out that “[i]n many high school shootings of the 1990s, jocks tormented young teen boys who took revenge in asserting a hyperviolent masculinity and went on shooting rampages” (Kellner). The need to be masculine has caused teens to tease other boys for not being ‘manly’ enough, and as a result of enough of this teasing, these boys turn to attacking their schools in order to reassert themselves, to prove to the people who teased them that they are tougher than them.

            Elliot Rodger, in his last video before he shot and killed six people and injured thirteen others, he said some phrased which allude to the exact need to prove he is masculine that Kellner pointed to in his article. Though Elliot was not in high school and not necessarily at the time being bullied by jocks, he hated how the ‘popular guys’ had a better life than him and got the girlfriends and sex that he had yearned for ‘since puberty’ he says in his video. Among the phrases he used to assert his masculinity through stating his plans of attack he says: “[y]ou will finally see that I am in truth the superior one, the true Alpha male”, and he also calls himself the “supreme gentleman” (News Now, “Elliot Rodgers Retribution – The Last Video”). Elliot seemed to feel that if he proved he was masculine through violence that he might show the girls who would not date him that they had missed out, that through his actions they would suddenly realize that he was the one they wanted to be with.

            Kellner argues that “dealing with problems of school and societal violence will require reconstruction of male identities and critique of masculinist socialization and identities” (Kellner). He claims that in order to put a full stop to these males turning to attacking schools as showing how tough they are, that America must rebuild how they raise their children and not place so much pressure for boys to be so tough. He says “[i]t is essential…that we address the issue of a crises of masculinity and social alienation, and not reflexively resort to using simplistic jargon – “he’s just crazy” – to explain away the issue” (Kellner). That in order to fix this increasing issue that society cannot label a shooter as mentally unstable and be all right with that explanation, that people have to be willing to admit fault and also see how fully complex the issue of school shootings really is.

The cause of school shootings is extremely complex and “…we need to admit to both the complexity and the urgency of the problem of school shootings, and enact an array of intelligent and informed responses that will produce a more peaceful and humane society” (Kellner). As of right now, “[e]very school shooting incident comes in the same dreary package: an angry, politically-charged rant, shrink-wrapped around a core of mental illness and neglect[,]” and in order for this issue to be more straightforwardly solved, Americans need to step up and realize what is going on (Manson). As Mark Manson mentioned in his article, there could be a potential school shooter sitting in his room now, mapping up his plan to attack while calling for help and attention throughout his plan, but no one is listening to him. According to the article “A Qualitative Investigation of Averted School Shooting Rampages,” by Jeff Daniels and other authors, “students are more likely to seek assistance when they feel connected to the faculty and peers in their school” (Daniels et al. 19). When a student feels more connected with the faculty of their school they are proven to be more likely to tell a teacher if they overhear a plan to attack the school. Daniels’ article shows four different school shootings that were averted due to students telling faculty of the plans they overheard (Daniels et al. 9-10). If the students and faculty get along, the amount of these shooting rampages would decline. As previously stated, shooters often leak information about their planned attack on purpose, but for multiple reasons, the students who hear these signs do not tell faculty about it. Most of the time students to not tell teachers about the plans they overheard because the shooter has been saying those kinds of things for a long time, or they are just afraid that the teacher will not take them seriously, so they ignore what the potential shooter had said and the cries for help are forgotten.

School shootings are much more complex than violent video games, rock music, gun laws, or mental illness on their own. In the combination of all the sources mentioned above, it is obvious that there are multiple contributing factors to why school shootings happen as well as why these events are becoming more and more frequent. The first step to fixing the issue of these mass murderers in schools is for society as a whole to admit that there are more causes and faults to these events than just the one law or media outlet that they disagree with. People must realize the complexities of school shootings and also realize that it is not just the tangible that is at fault for these events, but that in order to put a stop to the shootings that the nation might have to reevaluate what they deem as normal, what they consider important, and how the next generations are to be raised.

Bibliography

“List of School Shootings in the United States.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2014

 “School Shootings in America Since Sandy Hook.” Everytown. Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, 8 Dec. 2014. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Askar, Jamshid Ghazi. “TV Coverage of Sandy Hook Shootings Draws Heavy Criticism: Reporting Considered Invasive, Exploitative and Sensationalized.” Deseret News. Deseret News, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Daniels, Jeff A. et al.  “A Qualitative Investigation of Averted School Shootings Rampages.” The Counseling Psychologist 38.1 (2009): 1-27. SAGE Journal. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Fuchs, Erin. “‘Bowling for Columbine’ Still Has Some Frightening Lessons for Our Country.” Business Insider. Business Insider, 17 Dec. 2012. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Goddard, Steven. “Inconvenient Truth: Violent Crime Rate in the Gun-Free UK is 800% of the Heavily Armed US.” Real Science. Real Science, 3 Feb. 2013. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Kellner, Douglas. “The Sandy Hook Slaughter and Copy Cat Killers in a Media Celebrity Society: Analyses and Plans for Action.” Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture 12.1 (2013): n. pag. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Lindgren, Simon. “YouTube Gunmen? Mapping Participatory Media Discourse on School Shooting Videos.” Media Culture Society 33.1 (2011): 123-136. SAGE Journal. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Manson, Mark. “How We All Miss the Point on School Shootings.” Mark Manson. Infinity Squared Media, 27 May 2014. Web. 8 Dec. 2013.

News Now. “Elliot Rodgers Retribution – The Last Video.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 25 May 2014. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Preti, Antonio. “School Shooting as a Culturally Enforced Way of Expressing Suicidal Hostile Intentions.” The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 36.4 (2008): 544-550. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Rodgers, Simon. “Gun Homicides and Gun Ownership Listed by Country.” Theguardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 22 Jul, 2012. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Singal, Jesse. “Why Kids Shoot Up High Schools, Why They Only Do So Outside of Big Cities, and How to Stop Them.” Science of Us. New York Media, 10 Jun. 2014. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Wilkinson, Peter. “Dunblane: How UK School Massacre Led to Tighter Gun Control.” CNNWorld. Cable News Network, 30 Jan. 2013. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.

Woodytyler’s Channel. “Virginia Tech Shooting Confession Video.” Online video clip. YouTube. Youtube, 19 Apr. 2007. Web. 8 Dec. 2014. 

The Scarlet Letter and the Garden of Eden

Though Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his introduction to The Scarlet Letter, “The Custom-House” declares that he leaves the interpretation of his novel open to his readers, it is hard to deny that religion has a grand importance in the understanding of the novel. Hawthorne’s choice of diction and imagery—mostly in relation to nature—brings forth an importance of the choice in characters’ characteristics. Through the use of very specific diction and description the characters and symbolic imagery of the novel are shown to be very similar to those of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the overall consequences of their deeds. In his very specific use of biblical allusions to the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, Hawthorne also breaks away from the religious aspect of world view of the time period and creates an importance on seeing everything as a whole, away from religious perspectives.

In the most basic sense, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne represent the primary characters in the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. The beginning of the novel shows Hester on the scaffold, which the community uses for executions and public punishments of crimes and/or sins that citizens commit. Hester is seen standing on the scaffold with a scarlet letter A embroidered on her clothing and a baby in her arm. The A, a punishment given by the community, represents the sin of adultery in the story. Hawthorne starting in this very scene plays on the interpretations of the bible during the time of the story through the dialog of the crowd watching Hester. One man from the crowd says: “’is there no virtue in women, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows?’” (Hawthorne 479). The man’s choice in wording easily shows how he feels about women and that he believes that they have a sinful nature, and in this specific scene, the man speaks for the community as a whole in this belief. The shared belief is represented in the presentation of the punishment that Hester is given for her adulterous act.

 The first scaffold scene, where Hester stands alone with her baby in her arms, in terms of similarities between the story and the biblical one of Adam and Eve, plays on the biblical fact that Eve is said to have eaten the fruit first and then convinced Adam to eat it afterward. Genesis 3:6 states that “[w]hen the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (New International Version, Gen. 3.6). The community’s belief that women are, by nature, sinful, is backed up by the interpretation of the biblical story and therefore shown in their acts of ridicule to Hester alone. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, in the allusion to the biblical story, takes on the role as Adam. While Hester is punished publically for their shared sin, Dimmesdale fears to speak up and come clean to the community and therefore spends the next seven years concealing this sin. His concealing of his sin alludes to the story of Adam and Eve in the fact that in the bible, it is said that after having eaten from the forbidden tree, “the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’” (New International Version, Gen. 3.8-9). Just like Adam is found by God and his sin is revealed, Dimmesdale at the end of the novel is revealed as having been the other part of the adulterous act that Hester had been publically outcast from the community for seven years.

            Dimmesdale, like Adam in the Garden of Eden, hides from the sin that he has committed. Adam is found by God after trying to hide that he had eaten from the forbidden tree, but he does come clean to God and does not try to lie, he tells that Satan had told Eve and himself to eat the fruit. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, reveals himself and comes clean to a different sort of “God”. After seven years, Dimmesdale, in what is known as the third scaffolding scene, stands next to Hester Prynne and Pearl and calls himself “the one sinner of the world” (589).  The purpose of the diction in Dimmesdale’s last speech is to both tell the community what they wished to hear, and to also refute the political and law-based idea that the community in some way could represent God. Literary critic Denis Donoghue, in his article “Hawthorne and Sin” argues that  “[t]o Hawthorne, it appears that a sin is an act, a condition, a state of consciousness, such that I will not reveal it to my community--or indeed to anyone” (Donoghue 221). In the article, Donoghue claims that because Hawthorne uses no biblical or religious definition of sin and that “[w]hen he referred to sin, he seemed to assume a force of evil so pervasive that it did not need to be embodied in anyone or in any particular action[,]” that the community therefore took the place of God in The Scarlet Letter (Donoghue 217).

            The part of God that the community replaces is judgmental, and much more harsh, unforgiving, and merciless than the God that Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale speaks of in his many half-attempts to confess his sin. The bible has many verses that talk about the forgiveness of God; one of these verses is Matthew 6:14-15 which states “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (New International Version, Mat. 6.14-15). Corinthians 2:5-11 is specifically about the forgiveness of an offender and specifically states “you ought to forgive and comfort him [the offender], so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (New International Version, Corinthians 2.7). These bible verses directly state that offenders of sins should be forgiven by their community, and the community in The Scarlet Letter does not forgive the sins committed by Dimmesdale and Hester either in the position of God or in the position of merely the community. Their harsh, unforgiving nature can be shown in the fact that even after seven years of wearing the scarlet letter, the community still reacts to Hester Prynne and her child in ways that make them outcasts, and believe them almost to be the image of living, breathing sin. Hawthorne has a pattern of writing in the novel where he switches from internal to external parts of the story in order to give the reader the standpoint of all characters in the novel. When the narrator does not express some sort of inside insight of Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, Hester, or, on occasion, Pearl, it is usually expressing the general observations and judgments that the community as a whole has on the story as it unfolds.

            Rodger Chillingworth and Pearl are not characters that have to deal with the adulterous act as directly as Hester and Dimmesdale. However, these two characters are bigger connectors to the allusion to the biblical story of Adam and Eve than the very characters that symbolize Adam and Eve. Through their dialog, actions, and characteristics, Pearl and Chillingworth allude more to the bible than the simple sin that is the core of both stories.  

The character Rodger Chillingworth, through Hawthorne’s choice in description, diction, and Chillingworth’s interaction with other characters, becomes a symbol for Satan in The Scarlet Letter. In critic Dan Vogel’s article “Rodger Chillingworth: The Satanic Paradox in The Scarlet Letter,” he talks about the many different interpretations that other critics have of Chillingworth and how they undermine the book. Vogel lists many of the critic’s interpretations of Chillingworth at the beginning of the article: “Darrel Abel sees him as a symbol of ‘goodness perverted’; William Stein condemns him as ‘an unrepentant sinner’; and F. O. Matthiessen asserts that his evil is so great as to render him ‘divorced from God.’” (Vogel 272).  Instead, Vogel explains that “Chillingworth is, after all, not an Instigator of evil, he is merely ‘Satan’s emissary’” (Vogel 275). Vogel argues that Chillingworth is not any of these things that critics say he is, rather he is not the cause of all of the evil, but he uses the situation to his advantage.

One of the main ways in which Hawthorne creates Chillingworth as the symbol of Satan in the novel is through subtle descriptions of his features and characteristics. Hawthorne alludes to Chillingworth symbolizing Satan/the serpent in the Garden of Eden biblical story in his description of when he first sees Hester on the scaffold with Pearl in her arms. Hawthorne describes: “[a] writhing horror twisted across [Chillingworth’s] features, like a snake gliding over them,” (Hawthorne 484). When Hawthorne describes that the emotion that goes across Chillingworth’s face twisted like a ‘snake’, it is almost as if it is Hawthorne’s way of showing the exact moment where Chillingworth becomes a symbol of Satan. Chillingworth is also explained as embodying this mentality of something ‘evil’ when Hawthorne explains him as having “a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself” (Hawthorne 484). Chillingworth, in physicality is further explained as having one shoulder that is higher than the other and is described as smiling after another character feels pain. Chillingworth, in chapter four of the novel, touches the scarlet letter on Hester’s clothing, and smiles when it appears that she felt some sort of burning feeling due to his touch of the letter. The subtle details Hawthorne uses to describe Chillingworth makes him a symbol of the serpent/Satan in the biblical story of Adam and Eve.

The feelings of characters Pearl and Dimmesdale about Chillingworth helps strengthen his character as a symbol of Satan in the story. In the scene in which Pearl and Hester are seen in the graveyard by Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, Pearl calls out to her mother and names Chillingworth as Satan. Pearl says: “’Come away, mother! Come away, or yonder Black Man will catch you! He hath got hold of the minister already…’” (Hawthorne 524). In the novel, ‘Black Man’ is another phrase for the devil or Satan. Since Chillingworth is the only person who is typically shown to be directly with Dimmesdale, he is of course the person that Pearl is referring to as being the devil. Dimmesdale also had his own suspicions of Chillingworth, though he mostly dismissed these suspicions. Hawthorne writes: “[Dimmesdale] had constantly a dim perception of some evil influence watching over him, [but] could never gain a knowledge of its actual nature” (Hawthorne 527). The chapter also says that Dimmesdale “looked doubtfully, fearfully,—even at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred,—at the deformed figure of the old physician” (Hawthorne 527). Though Dimmesdale did not do anything about his feelings toward Chillingworth till the end of the story, the statement of his feelings that he pushed aside strengthens the sense of ‘evil’ that is associated with Chillingworth’s character which directly related to him symbolizing the serpent from the fall of Adam and Eve.

The ending chapters of the novel further strengthen the argument that Chillingworth is a symbol for Satan in his actions of trying “to snatch back his victim” when Dimmesdale ascends the scaffold and prepares to tell the community of his sins (Hawthorne 587). Chillingworth, in his last attempts to keep Dimmesdale under his control, calls out to Dimmesdale and says: “’Wave back that woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save you! Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?’” (Hawthorne 587). The diction in this quote is especially interesting, as Chillingworth stresses the importance of fame that he sees that Dimmesdale is about to ruin. In the beginning of the novel, Chillingworth tells Hester to tell no one that they were once husband and wife because he does not want his reputation to be soiled by hers. Chillingworth says: “…I will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman”, which further shows how highly Chillingworth thought of a man’s fame (Hawthorne 493). The importance that Chillingworth’s character places on fame among the community can be brought into relation to the biblical story of Adam and Eve in how the serpent convinces them to eat the apple. The serpent explains to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:3-5 that if they eat the apple they will know what God knows, that they will be more like him and in a way, they will then have the same stature as God. He says to Eve “‘You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” (New International Version, Gen. 3.3-5). Therefore, both the serpent and Chillingworth entrap their victims with the idea of fame, making Chillingworth the symbol of Satan in the novel.

The character Pearl in the novel is a very controversial topic among critics of The Scarlet Letter. Barbara Garlitz’s article “Pearl: 1850-1955” explains many of the different conclusions that critics have main concerning the importance of Pearl and what she might symbolize when looked at by critics from different time periods and with the use of different literary perspectives. She explains that not long after publication, “Pearl was called both ‘an imbodied angel from the skies’ and ‘a void little demon’” (Garlitz 689). Garlitz also explains that some critics argued that Pearl is a symbol of nature, and later on in the article she says: “[b]ut most critics have not considered its complexities; rather, they have isolated one thing Hawthorne says about Pearl or taken one aspect of her personality for the whole” (Garlitz 690).  In accordance to the story of Adam and Eve, Pearl represents the apple that Adam and Eve ate from in the biblical story that was the result of their being forced from the Garden of Eden. Pearl, as the apple, possesses the knowledge of both good and evil in The Scarlet Letter and all characteristics given to her by Hawthorne can be successfully explained by this analysis, unlike the points that the critics in Garlitz’s article argue.

In the novel, Pearl is called a multitude of different names such as “witch-baby”, by the shipmaster in the chapter “The Procession” and is also told that she is “the lineage of the Prince of Air” by Mistress Hibbens in the same chapter (Hawthorne 582). Hawthorne describes Pearl in a mixed fashion when she is chasing the children of the community in anger after they throw mud at Pearl and Hester. He writes: “[s]he resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence,—the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment” (Hawthorne 506). By calling her both an “infant pestilence” and a “half-fledged angel of judgment”, Hawthorne gives Pearl aspects of powerful beings associated with both Heaven and Hell in religion. The mix of names that is given to Pearl by the community with Hawthorne’s own descriptions of Pearl help to solidify that she is not simply an evil or a good being, but something much more, like the symbol of the apple in the story of Adam and Eve.

Hawthorne uses his word choice to better clarify to his readers that Pearl cannot be simplified as just a creature of evil or good. Though the phrases that he uses in the narrative when taken out of the story do not seem so subtle, the way in which he places the phrases of what Pearl is and what she represents is subtle among all the other details that are given. Outright, in chapter seven, Hawthorne describes Pearl as “the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life!” (Hawthorne 506). The description of Pearl as a living scarlet letter does not just mean that she is only a symbol of the sin that her parents committed, and Hawthorne hints that to his readers by describing all of the things that she could symbolize in the narrative, but also saying that she is much more than that symbol. For example, in the brook scene in chapter sixteen, “A Forest Walk”, Hawthorne writes:

Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-

spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with

gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily

along her course (Hawthorne 552).

Hawthorne’s play on what he already knows critics would judge Pearl to symbolize creates a more complex concept of Pearl’s character, which as argued by Garlitz, is overlooked still by a lot of critics. The quote above where Hawthorne almost calls Pearl a symbol of nature, but also explains that she was much different than the natural brook proves against all of the critic’s claims that she is a symbol of nature, and it is only one example of Hawthorne proving critics wrong before the articles about The Scarlet Letter were even written.

Hawthorne’s careful creation of Pearl is further shown in more of his choice in imagery and integration of history into the overall point of his book that he often clarifies to help readers understand. In the chapter “The Leech and his Patient”, Chillingworth is described as attempting to get into the mind of Dimmesdale and learn of the “treasure” that he keeps hidden from everyone. Hawthorne uses the phrase “the apple of his eye” to describe the “treasure” that Dimmesdale is keeping from Chillingworth and the community (Hawthorne 522). The use of the particular saying “apple of his eye” alludes to Pearl, the secret that he is keeping, and also hints that she represents the apple in the story of Adam and Eve. The idea is further backed up with historical evidence of beliefs in the time that the novel was published. Garlitz explains in her article that “[i]n the 1850's, when people did not think children innately good, they thought their evil traits proof of the inheritance of the sin of Adam, or…of the evil of their parents” (Garlitz 695). In the case of Pearl being the child, and Dimmesdale symbolizing Adam from the bible, Hawthorne uses his knowledge of the belief and creates Pearl as the apple, the symbol and inevitable inheritance of sin from her parent, the symbol of Adam.

Pearl’s representation of the symbol of the apple in the biblical story of Adam and Eve and her overall possession of the knowledge of good and evil can be shown through the characteristics and actions that she is described of having. One very interesting and subtle action that Pearl is shown doing is winking when she was a baby on the scaffold with Hester. What makes her wink interesting is that the only other character in the book that is described as winking is Rodger Chillingworth. Hawthorne directly points out the similar action in Pearl and Chillingworth in his description of Chillingworth at the scaffold: “[t]here [Chillingworth] stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while his grey eyes, accustomed to the shade light of his study, were winking, like those of Hester’s infant, in the unadulterated sunshine” (Hawthorne 486). At this point in the novel, Chillingworth has already been described as being similar to Satan as his features shifted “like a snake gliding over them” in the exact moment in which he sees Hester on the scaffold (Hawthorne 484). The common action of winking between Pearl and Chillingworth is only one of many interesting characteristics that Hawthorne gives Pearl that causes controversy over what her character symbolizes and what her importance is in the novel.

With just physical characteristics alone, Pearl is described both as being extremely beautiful and also being “elf-like”. In chapter six, “Pearl”, Pearl is described as having “wild, bright, deeply black eyes” which can easily be associated in religions with demon possession or evil (Hawthorne 501). However, in over nine instances in the novel, Pearl is described as having bird-like characteristics such as a “bird-like voice” (Hawthorne 501). Her motions are also written as being birdlike, for instance, when Dimmesdale calls her to stand with him on the scaffold her way in approaching him is described as: “…with the bird-like motion which was one of her characteristics, flew to him…” (Hawthorne 587). Her bird-like characteristics that Hawthorne purposely gives her and says so when the quote above is written, can symbolize a type of angel in the flight that she is often described with. The descriptions of Pearl as being bird-like also gives a more transcendentalist identification with nature, which can hint at both nature being chaotic, with Pearl being seen both as good and evil, and can also aid the viewpoint of Pearl as symbolizing an angel in the more religious perspective of transcendentalism.

Pearl is also constantly referred to as an elf-child, said type of elf is given mischievous characteristics through the community’s beliefs. These beliefs of a mischievous elf as what Pearl is in the eyes of the community is seen in the chapter “The Elf-Child and the Minister”, where Mr. Wilson asks Pearl: “’…Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies…?’” (Hawthorne 510). Pearl is further described as being mischievous like an elf when she is described as “dancing up and down like an elf, whenever she hit the scarlet letter” (Hawthorne 504). Despite her mischievous side, Hawthorne evens out her ‘good’ and ‘evil’ characteristics in the novel, making it difficult for one to argue that she is purely one or the other. Pearl may have odd reactions to a lot of things, such as her mother’s crying when she was a baby, where in certain instances she could either laugh at her mother or give her a stern face or cry with Hester (Hawthorne 501). In the brook scene in chapter sixteen of the novel, a greater goodness is given to Pearl in comparison to her mother. The sunshine in the forest is shown as being approachable by Pearl but not Hester, and Hawthorne describes that “[t]he light lingered about the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate” (Hawthorne 551). The fact that Hester cannot approach the sunshine without it disappearing but Pearl can stand in the sunlight with no issues is another hint by Hawthorne that Pearl is neither fully good nor evil.

Critic Anne Marie McNamara in her article “The Character of Flame: The Function of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter, she argues that “[Pearl] is the efficient cause of [Dimmesdale’s confession] and thus provides motivation for Dimmesdale’s final act” (McNamara 537). She further argues that The Scarlet Letter is a story about Dimmesdale and how he is redeemed. However, her critics do not fit in with Hawthorne’s political belief that religion and law should be separate, which is arguable one of the many reasons for the creation of the story. Rather than the novel being a story about Dimmesdale and how Pearl helps him redeem himself, Dimmesdale more sensibly fits into the symbol of Adam from the biblical story and Pearl the apple, the holder of the knowledge of good and evil. Barbara Garlitz puts this idea into better phrasing and has a better concept of Hawthorne’s intentions than McNamara in saying that “Hawthorne brilliantly transmuted reality into symbol by giving Pearl the general characteristics of children, but in so exaggerated a form that they become the symbol, not of the scarlet letter but of what produced it—Hester's diseased moral state” (Garlitz 696). Garlitz argues that Pearl is not just a symbol of innocence in children, but also the moral state of her mother. Arguable, Garlitz agrees with my statement that Pearl is neither good nor evil, but she retains characteristics for both and therefore is the symbol of the apple in the allusion to the biblical story of Adam and Eve in Hawthorne’s novel.

In his article, Donoghue brings forth a very interesting idea that despite Hawthorne’s frequent and continual use of the word sin, he does not actually fully show or have anything in the book represent sin as anything that fits any biblical or religious definition of the word. Donoghue says that though sin is brought up a lot in the novel, “[n]either Hester Prynne nor Arthur Dimmesdale acknowledges that adultery is a sin and that they stand in danger of eternal damnation: they have not repented, confessed their sin, or prayed for forgiveness” (Donoghue 217). In analyzing each time Hawthorne uses the words: sin, sinner, sinful, etc. a lot of the times that the words are used in the narration are through the perspective of the community, an unknown narrator that some claim to be Hawthorne himself. Each time sin is brought up by Dimmesdale or Hester neither of them directly says that the act of adultery is a sin. Often times they refer to being sinful—especially in the case of Dimmesdale—but just as Donoghue states, neither of them is shown praying to God for forgiveness or confessing their sin.

The fact that Hester and Dimmesdale never pray for forgiveness is not to say that they do not feel shame or know that they have done something to be in the situation that they find themselves in in the novel. Donoghue explains that “Hester knows why she has been ostracized: she has incurred social disgrace and the punishment of being for a time cast aside. She does not feel guilty, however. Nor does Dimmesdale: his actions are occluded by his hypocrisy” (Donoghue 220). Often times in The Scarlet Letter, the characters are shown as expressing shame, but not guilt, as Donoghue explains above. Though the words shame and guilt are often used interchangeably, they are quite different in the causes of each feeling. In the case of guilt, a person has to have committed a wrong doing, or in this case, a sin to feel guilty. The similar painful feeling that one feels that is called shame, on the other hand, does not require a person to have done anything wrong in order to feel it. Shame is generally more based on outside opinions or judgments on someone rather than that person having done anything wrong.

There are lots of instances where Hester feels shameful, but not guilty of any act or sin in the story. In chapter VIII, “The Elf-Child and the Minister,” something that Dimmesdale says might cause readers to think that he is feeling guilty for the adulterous act that he and Hester committed in his conversation with the Governor, in a subtle attempt to convince the community to let Pearl stay with her mother. Dimmesdale says: “This child [Pearl] of its father’s guilt and its mother’s shame hath come from the hand of God…” (Hawthorne 513). In his explanation of the purpose of Pearl’s existence in Hester’s life, he uses the word “guilt” to explain the way the father—he—feels. However, this use of guilt is not expressing any guilt towards the adulterous act, nor is it directly said to be due to the adulterous act. It can be more safely assumed that in using the word “guilt” to describe how he feels, Dimmesdale was referring to the concealment of his act with Hester, but still not referring to that act as a sin. The fact that Hester and Dimmesdale are only shown as feeling shame in reference to their adulterous act and not guilt shows more indirectly that they do not feel that the adulterous act they committed together was a sin.

Hawthorne uses religious diction, images, and allusions to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden to form an argument on what is wrong about religion controlling law and he also uses it to break free from religious aspects to show the flaws in pure religious perspective. One manner in which Hawthorne breaks away from the religious control in the story is in the way Hester and Dimmesdale go about their lives after Hester is punished for their adulterous sin. Though she was publicized as a sinner and avoided by the community, she was still able to sell the garments that she sewed and those who bought them were happy to wear them. Internally, Dimmesdale had a more difficult time adjusting the weight of the sin, but despite his guilt for not telling the community, he was able to give the most inspirational sermons to the community and soon became the favorite minister among the community even though he was also the youngest. Dimmesdale’s success in her sermons is further exemplified bt McNamara’s article when she says that it is essential to for readers to realize that “…in spite of the physical and moral deterioration resulting from his own conscience and from Chillingworth's vindictive ministrations… his delicate spiritual sensitivity remain unimpaired” (McNamara 540). Dimmesdale was able to give purifying sermons to the community despite the constant ‘sin’ he committed of not telling the community that he was the father of Pearl and the extra influence and torture that Chillingworth inflicted on him.

As stated in the section about Chillingworth and his representation as Satan in the novel, Chillingworth is not Satan himself, but rather, as Vogel explains, an “emissary” of the devil, one who uses the consequences of Dimmesdale and Hester’s actions to his advantage but does not necessarily cause the evil deed that started it all itself. Hawthorne breaks away from the full biblical allusion to the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden in the fact that rather than Chillingworth being Satan, he was still a human being. As a human being, Hester, in her act, does break Chillingworth’s heart in her adulterous actions. Chillingworth loved Hester, and one might even argue that he still loves her throughout the entire novel, and though he agrees that they should not have married, his love still exists. Chillingworth shows his understanding and pain in her actions in saying: “’how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl’s fantasy!’” (Hawthorne 491). Though in the rest of the novel Dimmesdale is characterized as being ‘evil’ or called Satan by many different characters, his actions were revenge based, and not purely because he was an evil character.

Critics use all sorts of lenses to analyze Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter, but many of the lenses overlook one of the main points that Hawthorne is trying to make in his use of religion in his book, and that is that religion and the bible cannot show the whole picture. The most evident scene in the book that relates to this is in the chapter “A Forest Walk” when Hester spots Dimmesdale walking and while he is unaware of anyone watching, she sees him and all his agony and how it wears him down. The structure of Hawthorne’s narrative as a whole is to show the reader almost all perspectives and thoughts and beliefs of all the characters, and in doing this he again shows how important grasping the whole picture of a situation is. In the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, the bible lacks a sense of a complete story because the majority is describing the sin that they committed and not the individual thoughts that went through the heads of Adam and Eve or the serpent or God himself. The biblical story lacks a lot of sides that could allow the reader to completely understand each aspect of it. Therefore, though Hawthorne uses the story of Adam and Eve as a template for his book, he breaks away from the restraints of the religious story and in doing so places a high importance on receiving every aspect of a situation. Through breaking off from the biblical allusion, he shows his readers that religion cannot solve or explain everything, and that religion is not perfect.

Works Cited

"BibleGateway." New International Version (NIV). N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.

Donoghue, Denis. "Hawthorne and Sin." Christianity & Literature 52.2 (2003): 215-232. MLA. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Garlitz, Barbara. “Pearl: 1850-1955.” PMLA 72.4 (1957): 689-699. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Custom-House: Introductory to The Scarlet Letter.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Gen ed.  Nina Baym. Vol. B. New York: Norton, 2012. 450-476. Print.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Scarlet Letter.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8^th ed. Gen ed.  Nina Baym. Vol. B. New York: Norton, 2012. 476-594. Print.

McNamara, Anne Marie. "The Character of Flame: The Function of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter." American Literature 27.4 (1956): 537-553. MLA. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

Vogel, Dan. “Rodger Chillingworth: The Satanic Paradox in The Scarlet Letter.” Criticism 5.3 (1963): 272-280. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.