This explains why I couldn’t help being stupefied as I just learnt from some quarters that you need to have a sparkling moral life in order to criticise or protest against the government of your country. When they do not believe in your cause, they raise every argument to undermine it. This nation will only escape its impending doom when we all come down from our high-horses of judgment and view nation building as the collective task of all, irrespective of our social or religious leanings. From a judgmental standpoint, they find it inconvenient to separate their definition of morality from their prism of myopia, of complex social issues.Īnd they stretch it to a conclusion of what they think is right, irrespective of the opinion of others. The Nigerian society can be likened to that Puritan society, where standards must be set by certain moral jingoists over every issue bordering on the society’s culture, economy, leadership and politics. The above preamble which I culled from Hypocrisy of the Puritan Society sheds light on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and is a clear depiction of the life of a Puritan society in early America. In, it is elucidated that, “Hester Prynne is condemned to wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ on her chest as a punishment for the sin of adultery, but it seems that plenty of the other citizens of Salem are harboring similar sins without admitting them. Furthermore, they were quick to judge Hester, a woman of normal social class, when she committed her crime but refuse to see what is not right before their eyes when it involves a man in a position of power and respect, lending credence to their hypocrisy. The Puritans merely assume that the scream is from a witch and the other Reverend simply does not see Dimmesdale because they are all blind to the fact that someone in such a great position of power could commit a sin. This symbolises the blindness and hypocrisy of the Puritan society. However, like the other townspeople, Reverend Wilson somehow seems not to notice Dimmesdale upon the scaffold. As well, Reverend Wilson walks near the scaffold and Dimmesdale fears that he will be discovered and questioned by the other Reverend. However, the few townspeople who hear his cry simply mistake it for a witch’s cry. In one scene, Reverend Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold in the centre of town and screams out into the night in agony. Throughout the novel, Dimmesdale seems to handle the fact that he is hiding the secret of being Pearl’s father extremely well until Chillingworth and his evil doings finally get to Dimmesdale. This is why no one could ever suspect him of being the father of Pearl, Hester Prynne’s child. He is a beloved Reverend who many people of the town look to for comfort. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is a highly respected member of the Puritan community. …does one need to have morals to criticise the government of his country? Does one need to be a saint to hold leaders accountable for the mandate given to them, more so, when one has never held a public office (such that one may then be categorised as part of the problem and tagged a hypocrite)?
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