Part 1 of Essay
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain each had a different view on how an individual does and should interact with society. They each pointed fingers at what caused the friction between a person and his society. Several themes run common to these writers, but the most prevalent may be the dualistic the ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... mutinies against his own religion. Through all these characters’ actions, Hawthorne shows us why the Puritan society was in disarray. He agrees with Thoreau and Twain in that society is corrupt and that society is the problem. However, he seems to put more blame on the individual than on the masses. Hester and her daughter, of course, were not actually Puritans, but Hawthorne is just using them as an example of how no society will ever remain “pure” because it is impossible for the people within the society to r ....