Term Paper on "Scarlet Letter and the Rapture"

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Scarlet Letter & the Rapture of Canaan

The Scarlet Letter and the Rapture of Canaan

Introduction to the Rapture of Canaan

Ninah's repressed desire for intimacy and sensual experience in Sheri Reynolds' book has an enormous impact on the theme of the novel, and makes such a huge statement about how not to raise a child, it could be used - and probably is - in psychology classes. To be raised by a religiously fanatical family that holds the fear of going to Hell over your head is a tremendous emotional burden for a young girl.

Fanatical and out-dated views of religion and life, emphasizing the fear of eternal punishment if obedience isn't forthcoming in a narrowly defined perversion of spiritual truth, when pushed obsessively on children as rules, are more evil than what the fanatical characters espousing those rules are trying to protect those children from. The hints and clues are everywhere in both these novels. And particularly in the Rapture of Canaan, they're really more than clues; they amount to evidence of a far too strict child-rearing setting for Ninah, who is confused and tormented sexually and socially by her guilt juxtaposed with her human desire for sensual attention.

As for the guilt and the obsessive social wish to punish Hester, this character fights back against the curse of the community which gave her the letter "A" on her chest. She keeps her child, and keeps her sanity, while it seems everything around her is bizarre and the community and law enforcement lack any kind of stable grip on their professed values.

The Rapture of Canaan: The closepins on Ninah's body offer the reader a perverted, twisted view of this family. That perversion probably led to Ninah's wild dream (pp. 72-73) while at a youth retreat, a dream of seeing Jesus on a cross out her window, holding a handful of azaleas.

A dreamed I went outside in just my gown, and walked up to him. He was too nearly dead to speak, but all he had in his eyes was love for me." (Sigmund Freud would have a field day delving into this dream, since he was really the pioneer in dream analysis, and his analysis was often tied to literature.) and so Ninah "walked up to the wound in his side where he'd been stuck with a sword. I put my mouth on that wound and began drinking from it, swallowing his blood."

When Jesus' side wound "became a mouth," Ninah, in a dream-state, was being "kissed back" by this hideous wound-mouth: "...I could slip my tongue into the wound, feel the inside of his skin with my tongue, circle it there, tasting him."

At this point, without trying to enlist the theories of Freud or be pseudo-psychological, it seems that the sexual repression and the religious fanaticism in Ninah's life combined to create this repulsive religious and sexual fantasy. In the typical communion ceremony in many Christian churches, the pastor says, as the church member is served the wine, "This is the blood of Christ." That image might have entered in here for Ninah.

And after Jesus turned into James, Ninah's friend with whom she prays regularly (in an almost military-like obsessive style), she "sat up and peered around the dark room. Bodies lay everywhere, sleeping against walls and beneath tables. I didn't know where James might be," Ninah said.

Ninah is so wrapped up in her sexual repressive state, when Everett asked her about why she would have a bad dream at a youth retreat, and adds, "Is something on your chest?" (73) she thinks only of the closepins that she "should" have with her, but doesn't.

On page 89, Grandpa laid down the law as far as hand-holding: "...we could hold hands in prayer if we felt the need, but we weren't to hold hands at any other time." That gave Ninah the perfect "out" to at least have physical contact with a boy, which she desperately needed to have. Indeed, we learn also on 89 that most prayer was done by individuals who were alone, and it was "an unusual circumstance for the prayer partners to meet together in the first place..."

When Grandpa said it was okay to go into the living room, James and Ninah, to pray (and hold hands), Ninah said it was strange to know they "were trusting us" to be alone together, when "I couldn't even trust myself"; and she "surely couldn't trust James." When James smiled at her, her heart fell into her pelvis, "like it'd been doing so often." She also loved the feeling of his hand on her leg, "his big man's hand on my long, long leg," though she didn't know "if what I felt was a thrill or a fear, but it was bigger than anything I'd known."

Here again, Ninah is experiencing a sensual rush, a physical heat in her body and on her skin, which is perfectly natural for a young woman to feel, and she can get away with what little guilt she might experience through this hot, sexy feeling, because, after all, it's during prayer, and prayer can erase a multitude of sins.

On page 90, the author may be working words into a subtle sexual irony or double meaning, when she writes: "All that winter James and I came together as prayer partners, and all that winter he never touched me." it's interesting that James washed out her gym suit, and she washed his. That's getting pretty "intimate" without being physically intimate, it seems.

But things get physical beyond washing out sweaty gym clothes on page 121: and the intertwining of sensuality and spirituality is on one hand kind of silly - justifying kissing and petting based on listening for a word from God - but on the other, this kiss has been building up for a long time, all wrapped around prayer. "Lord, maybe I'm confused. Maybe I'm the one who's summoned to be your holy conduit for Ninah," James said to God. "Give me your words, Precious Lamb."

Ninah appreciates that James was speaking "so honestly, so totally sincerely," she just wanted to keep her heart "open to God...and then I felt his knees next to mine, so close, and I recognized his breath, warm and tinted with something that smelled like grass, and I wanted to be his holy conduit too, whatever that was." There is a key phrase, "whatever that was," because to young repressed Ninah, it came down to, hey, this really feels good being so close to a boy, and I want more of whatever it is. "And then his mouth was next to mine, and he was speaking into my mouth, and I hoped it might be Jesus, so I didn't pull away." James whispered down Ninah's throat as though he's talking to Jesus, "and then he kissed me like a waterfall, and I kept my mouth wide open until he called out, 'Ninah, this can't be right. We have to pray."

God, I think we're getting mixed signals," and what an ironic and perfectly apt statement that was, which sums up most of the book, with regards to the relationship between James and Ninah. "And then I leaned into him and kissed on the throat and at the place where his soft shirt rested against his neck."

The Scarlet Letter:

Does Hester overcome the view that she was wicked that pleasure is indeed a wicked thing? Does she accept Puritan gender roles? On page 36 of the Scarlet Letter (Copyright 1960, the Libra Collection) Hawthorne sets up the plot; the supposedly grim future of Hester is spelled out by the narrator: she will be doomed to become "the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of a woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus, the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast - at her, the child of honorable parents - at her, the mother of a babe...as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument."

On page 123, Mr. Dimmesdale's guilt had seemed to have been well established through the lines of narrative, as to his role in Hester's "guilt" as to having a child out of wedlock; and she nonetheless is a strong person. She feels compelled to help Dimmesdale, which clearly shows that she has overcome the emotional demise she was thrust into at the outset of the novel. "With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale's well-being and repose."

This is a "poor, fallen man," who "had a right" to Hester's "utmost aid. Little… READ MORE

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