All Road Lead to Theme

All Road Lead to Theme

The Scarlet Letter/2013

Timeline of Essay

Friday (12/13): Receive prompt/logistics

Monday (12/16): Have your passage chosen and marked up with your notes; have a vomit copy ready

Tuesday (12/17): Drafting workshop; continue sending vomit copies

Wednesday (12/18): Rough draft due

Thursday (12/19): Revision Time

Friday (12/20): Final Draft due

When Mirrors Appear in The Scarlet Letter

What purpose do they serve?

What is Hawthorne trying to say?

Chapter 2

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 14

Chapter 16

Chapter 19

Lacan's Mirror Stage

The idea of the "mirror stage" is an important early component in Lacan’s critical reinterpretation of the work of Freud. Drawing on work in physiology and animal psychology, Lacan proposes that human infants pass through a stage in which an external image of the body (reflected in a mirror, or represented to the infant through the mother or primary caregiver) produces a psychic response that gives rise to the mental representation of an "I". The infant identifies with the image, which serves as a gestalt of the infant's emerging perceptions of selfhood, but because the image of a unified body does not correspond with the underdeveloped infant's physical vulnerability and weakness, this imago is established as an Ideal-I toward which the subject will perpetually strive throughout his or her life.

For Lacan, the mirror stage establishes the ego as fundamentally dependent upon external objects, on an other. As the so-called "individual" matures and enters into social relations through language, this "other" will be elaborated within social and linguistic frameworks that will give each subject's personality (and his or her neuroses and other psychic disturbances) its particular characteristics.

In your groups...

Discuss the literal meaning of mirrors. Create a definition.

What is the metaphorical meaning of mirrors? Have we seen anything that involves mirrors in The Scarlet Letter?

Learning Objectives

• Establish a list of themes found in The Scarlet Letter
• Determine how theme is revealed through the author's craft
• Develop a thesis for how a specific passage reveals theme

With Your Group...

Come up with a list of possible themes in The Scarlet Letter

Look

Again and Again: an author will use words, phrases and images again and again

Lesson of the Elder: Look for a scene when the primary character is alone with a character who is older and wiser. They tend to have a conversation that relates to the theme of the story.

Contradictions: Look for places in the story where the character says or does something out of character—something contradictory.

Tough Questions: for when the main character asks him/herself tough questions—“I wonder…Why does…Am I brave enough…?”

Last Lines: Look at the last line(s) of the story and think about its significance

Look at the Quotes

STEP #1: Determine which quotes match up with the themes that you listed

Once you have completed this, we will go over the answers and see what your rationalization is for some of them.

STEP #2: In your notebooks (individually), cite HOW the author's craft (word choice, metaphor, tone, characterization, complex relationships) contributes to the theme for quote(s) that you are intrigued by.

Chapter 19

As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her (166).

THEME: The crippling effects of guilt and shame

Parts of the quote that reveal theme: "withering spell" "sad letter" "departed" "fading sunshine" "gray shadow" "fall"

Author's Craft: Word choice, tone, juxtaposition