E-C-304 English Language Teaching

 Assignment Paper: - E-C-304 English Language Teaching

Topic                     : - Teaching English as a second Language 
                                   in India Focus on Objectives

Student’s name     : - Vala Neeta T.

Roll  no                 :- 20

URL                      :-valaneeta391011.blogspot.com

Semester               :- 3

Batch                    :- 2010-11

                                                 

                                  Submitted to,

                                                 Mr. Devarshi Mehta.

                                                 Department of English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

Teaching English as a second Language in India: Focus on Objectives

                                                             Shivendra K. Verma

ABSTRACT:- After highlighting certain the theoretical aspects of notion “Objectives of language teaching”, We discus the functionally-determined sub-categorization of languages into First Language, Second Language, Third Language, Foreign Language, and Classical language. We then focus on the objectives of teaching English as a Second Language in India.

    The Objectives of Language teaching:-

            The global objectives of language teaching can be defined as helping children learn a language to perform a variety of functions. This range from the sociable use of phatic communion and a network of communicative uses to its use at the highest level of “cognition”, “catharsis”, and “self-expression”. Underlying these functions are two fundamental: helping children learn how ask questions, the most important intellectual ability man has yet developed, and helping children use this language effectively in different social networks.

         Languages in a multilingual setting form a system-network. Each language in this network has a function- determined value contrastive to the function-determined values of the other languages. A society or a government can assign new terms of its own policy of language planning, but the society or government must realize that this assignment of a new value to a language will produce a chain reaction in network. The values of the languages in the other languages in the network are bound to undergo changes.

           The notion of “link language” or “lingua franca” has an important significance in a multilingual setting. It encourages wider mobility, national integration, and a sense of tolerance. It enriches other languages in contact and gets enriched by them. Effective bilingualism or triligualism or even multilingualism is a powerful way enriching the linguistic repertoire of individuals. These resources offered by used for rapid social and economic changes and modernization programmers.

            Teaching is not a unidirectional process of pumping bits and pieces of unrelated and undigested gobbets f knowledge into empty sacks. It is a bidirectional, interactional process. Learners are not just passive recipients of socially accepted language patterns. They play an active role in this teaching-learning process. They actively strain, filter and recognize what they are not photographic reproductions but artistic recreations. The learners are meaning- makers. The main objectives at every level of teaching should be to help learners learn how to draw out their latent creativity.               

              Every learner is born with a built- in language-learning mechanism. This mechanism gets activated when the learner is exposed to that language. What is, `therefore essential is to create an atmosphere where learning can take place. Children learn the language they hear around them. Exposure to a rich variety of linguistic material is as important in first language acquisition as in second language learning. The teaching of English as a second language, in , in particular , has often been less successful than it might have been , as a result of the restricted variety of linguistic contexts with which students are provide. Learners should ideally be exposed to a variety of contextualized language material. They must hear and see language in action. 

                        The emphasis should shift from encouraging learners to memorize paradigms and grammatical rules to helping them interact with people using different registers of language in a variety of situation. In that process the learners internalize not only the linguistic but also the sociolinguistic rules of the game, so that they capture the system which enables them to focus on “What to say when and how”. It should also enable them to organize words in sentences and sentences in texts effectively keeping in view “the topic of discourse”, “addresser-addresses relationship”, and “socio-cultural setting”. Learning a language is not just a question of learning to produce sentences and utterances which are grammatical and acceptable; they must also be appropriate.

                   Each of the four major skills; reading, writing, speaking, and understanding, is composed of a hierarchy of sub skills. What is necessary is to identify the sub skills that are to be strengthened and expanded in the process of teaching a first language, a second language or foreign language.

                The objectives of teaching a language or languages is not simply t make the leaner learn the major language skills but to enable the learners to play their communicative roles effectively and to select languages/registers/styles according to the roles they are playing. “Every social person is a bundle of personae, a bundle of parts, and each part having its lines. If you do not know your lines, you are no use in the play”(first1957:184)

                The object in teaching a language…is to enable the learner  to behave in such away that he can participate to some degree and for certain purposes as a member of a community other than his own. The degree to which any particular leaner may wish to participate will vary. He may seek only to read technical literature, or he may wish to preach the gospel in a foreign country. These varying degrees of participation require different levels of skills in language performance.

               A teacher full of life and vigour, resourcefulness and innovative power, love and understanding, can turn a dull class into a lively two-way international game. A well qualified, energetic and inventive teacher can be a “living “model, and act as the best audio-visual aid.

Functionally-determined sub-categories:-

  First Language (L1)

          L-1 is used for performing all the essential, personal functions. These are gradually expanded to cover all types of interpersonal functions. “In order to live, the young human has to be progressively incorporated into social organization, and the main conditions of that incorporation is sharing the local magic- that is, the language (Firth 1957;185).L-1 is an indispensable instrument of national culture. It is the primary means for the through the transmissions of culture from one generation to another.” “Learning through the mother tongue is the most potent and comprehensive medium for the expression of the student’s entire personality” (Government of the India 1956), for it is learning the basis of all his or her future actives, the means by which he or she is going to learn almost everything else (Abercrombie 1956;23). The Education commission in 1902 recommended mother tongue as the proper medium of instruction for all classes up to the higher secondary level.

Second Language (L-2)

        Education people living in towns and cities, English as a second language functions primarily as an interstate or international link language of . Some of them also use it as an international language of knowledge, trade and industry. An important question here is; is L-2 the main or associated medium of instruction at all levels or at a particular level, or is it taught as a subject listed under “other languages”? When an “exoglossic” language s used by a country as its official language and/or as a medium of instruction at all levels, it generates its own problems.

 Foreign Language

        It is used by a select group of learners in a very restricted set of situation. The main objective of learning a foreign language is to have direct access to the speakers of these languages and their cultures. It enables the learners to participate in a foreign society in certain roles and certain situations. A foreign language like Russian is used in India for absorbing the cultural patterns of the USSR; English as a second language is used in India as an alternative way of expressing Indian patterns of life.

Classical Language

       A classical language like Sanskrit provides access to ancient culture, learning and philosophy of life and is assumed to contribute to the intellectual enrichment of its learners. Its real value can not be measured in terms of helps you do in everyday life but in terms of refining your sensibility, and sharpening you tools of analysis, enriching the modern language and offering “insights” into a variety of linguistic problems.

    Objectives of teaching English as a Second Language in India

                   The objectives have to be formulated in light of what we perceive our needs for English to be in a multilingual setting, at both the national and individual levels. This is related to the following questions: What are the roles of Hindi, English, regional language, classical language, foreign languages and languages of minority group in our multilingual setting? What are the topics and situations that will necessitate the use of English? What is the kind and amount of English that the learners will need?

                                   As the associate official language, an international “link language”, the language favored by all- India institutions, the legal and banking systems, trade and commerce and defense, English has important functions to serve internally, in addition to its role as our “window on the world”. It is clear, therefore, that English has important functions in communications of diverse types. The skills of communication will continue to be at a premium, and teaching will have to try to impart a certain minimal competence in these skills. Kipping in view these functions, the primary aim of teaching English as a second language at the secondary level should be to give the learners an effective mastery of the language, that is, to help them acquire

    The ability to read easily, and with understanding, books in English written within a prescribed range of vocabulary and sentences structure, and to read with good understanding (if not with speed) easy unsimplified texts on familiar topics, fully glossed and annotated in their known language.

    The readiness to proceed to a more advanced reading stage, that of reading unsimplified texts, particularly those bound up with personal studies and interests, with the help of bilingual dictionaries;

    The ability to understand a talk in English on a subject of general experience and interest, clearly spoken and restricted in vocabulary and sentences structure to the range of the syllabus;

    The ability to write comprehensible in English, and without gross errors, on a familiar topic which leads itself to expression within the range of vocabulary and sentence structure that has been taught;

    The ability to carry on comprehensibly a conversation in English on a topic fully within the range both of their experience and interests and well within the range of active command postulated by the syllabus.

                    The level of active command to be aimed at should be adequate both for those who wish to pursue higher education in English for those who terminate their education at the end of secondary stage and wish to enter upon a career. The specific objectives for these two broad categories of student population will have to be drawn up, and provision made for varying standards of achievement in English. This will mean a shift in focus from the teaching and learning of English as a vehicle of a closed system of culture-bound, literature-based values its function as a tool for designed to perform a set of functions (including its function as to a tool for the other subjects)

                                It is important that we should be able to identify the English requirement of various groups of students precisely, and try to provide for each such group the pattern of courses which will be relevant to the needs of learners. This is important because not all students will need English to the same level of competence. We must ensure that English (1) functions as a “service-language” for the various categories of learners, (2) promotes intellectual and cultural awareness of the contemporary world we live in, and (3) provides “information content” necessary for the modernization of our country. It is also important that special opportunities are made available to help the weaker sections of our society to acquire an adequate competence in English so that they do not remain forever disadvantaged in areas of higher education and in terms of upward social mobility.

Work Cited

Verma, Shivendra K.  “Teaching English as a Second Language in India: Focus on Objectives”.English in India.Ed. Omkar N. Kaul. Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad.Print. 

E-C-301 The Modernist Literature

Assignment Paper: - E-C-301 The Modernist Literature

Topic                     : - Art of charecterization

Student’s name     : - Vala Neeta T.

Roll  no                 :- 20

URL                      :-valaneeta391011.blogspot.com

Semester               :- 3

Batch                    :- 2010-11

                                                

                                   Submitted to,

                                                 Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                 Department of English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

 

   Art of Characterization

    Conventional technique:

          E.M. Foster and other critics have expressed the view that Mrs. Woolf fails to provide in her novels memorable gallery of portrait of such as we get in the works of other novelists. Her characters, it has been said, do not live long in the mind and are soon forgotten. The fact is that there are characters in her novels, vivid and conventional and so must not be judged, by the older convention which Mrs. Woolf rejected. Conventionally, ever since the time of Fielding, novelists have adopted two methods of character drawing. First, they have sketched their characters through set description. We are told directly what a character looks like, how he dresses up, what are his oddities, and what are the silent qualities of his head and heart.

          Secondly, characters have been visualized and made real through own words and actions, as well as through what other have to say about them. However, Mrs. Woolf regarded such methods of characterization as superficial. In this way, we get the externals of characters and not the inner reality. Her purpose was to render in her novels the soul or ‘psyche’ of her dramatis nonsense and with this end in view she adopted a new technique of characterization.

    Break from Tradition:-

          Mrs. Woolf belongs to the school of “stream of consciousness” novelists she is one of those great English novelists of the 20^th century who had the courage to break free from tradition, and then she does not give us merely the externals of character, but renders the very souls of her personage with created a number of memorable, many-sided and sounded figure, which are among the immortals of literature. Her fiction is a well-stored picture-gallery of vivid and memorable men and woman.

    The stream of consciousness technique:-

Her characters are not directly describes. She does not follow the traditional method her men and women, no formulate covering up their personality. Her character rarely reveals them by what they say or do. Rather,

                   “We derive our impression of them form the effects they

 Produce on the minds of other characters in the novel.

 Her method is cumulative, and her characters cannot

 Be taken out of the context and judged in isolation.”

This is done by the use of the stream of consciousness technique. The personality of a character is built up not all a once, but gradually, step by step, by nothing the impact on his soul of significant scenes and moments, both past and present. A character is further rounded up by noting his or her impact on the minds of other figures in memorable and visualized characters, like Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs. Ramsay, live in the mind, and enlarge our capacity for imaginative sympathy.

         

The writer effaces herself more and more, the illusion of the all seeing eye of the novelist, it replaced by the illusion that we are seeing by glimpses, with our own imperfect vision. In the way, we see much more than the conventional novel. Human beings cuouse in each other profound and valued feelings and the sum of such feelings in different personage gives a vivid account of their personalities. They throw light on each other.

    The multiple point of view:

          Personality is revealed by inner monologue the novelist uses the stream of consciousness technique for the purpose.

“There is continual shifting from mind to mind, so that we as often perceive the impression given by one to another  the experience each receives.”

                    Also certain scenes and moments are selected which throw a character into high relief, the scene in the children’s bedroom in To the Lighthouse, for example, which highlights at once Mrs. Ramsay’s tact and motherly love, sympathy and understanding. Mrs. Ramsay emerges as a fully rounded character because we know her as she is reflected in several others. Further, we share the memories of divorce people regarding her at a number of crucial memories in her life. We know her as she is today and she was in the past, and also know the various factors which have influenced her soul and determined her character or predisposition to act in a particular manner. We have been a peep into her soul, and come to know her more intimately than would ever have been possible by the use of conventional methods. We know her by the roots, so to say. We know her not only through her conscious acts and words, but also through what passes within her at the sub-conscious level, and also through the stream of consciousness of a number of other characters.

Similarly, the stream of consciousness technique has been used with equal effect to render the soul or psyche of Mr. Ramsay. We first know her through the stream of consciousness of his wife, and then through that of William Bankes. Further light is thrown upon his character by the hostility which he raises in the minds of his children. James and Cam in particular. In this way his personality is built up. His character has been further realized by his habit of reciting lines of poetry to dramatize his sense of loneliness and desolation. This is one of the finest examples of the way in which Mrs. Woolf can realize a character with perfect economy. The novelists’ purpose was to convey how life fells to those who live it, to convey, in other words, the actual sensation of living and suffering, and she has fully succeeded in doing so. Indeed, as far as the richness and variety of characterization is concerned, To the Lighthouse is the finest of the novels of Virginia Woolf.

    Her female character:

         Mrs. Woolf was a woman and quite naturally it is to be expected that her greatest triumphs would be achieved in painting female characters. She does succeed in rendering the essential quality of female experience where it differs from the male, she, of course, notes the wavering, uncertain nature of the dividing line, and she also sees the qualities of each sex appearing in the other.

“But she discerns more clearly, perhaps, than any other novelist, the peculiar nature of typically feminine modes of thought and apprehension, and their peculiar value as the complement of masculine modes.”

                Women in her novels, women who are clearly distinguished from each other, share this essential womanliness. Thus Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe, Sally Seton, Mrs. Dalloway, Doris Kilman and Elizabeth are all sharply distinguished from each other, but all have this essential womanliness. For example, Mrs. Ramsay has this womanliness. One of the factors in this essential feminity is the incapacity of these women far retaining or distinguishing between far retaining or distinguishing between facts. Thus Mrs. Ramsay does not understand what Charles Tansley is studying. She simply says that his dissertation is about ‘the influence of someone on somebody’. Can have no idea of the four sides of the copass. Tansley speaks for the novelist herself when he says,

                               “Women can’t paint”

                               Women can’t write.”

                There is certain vagueness, certain muddle- headedness about their minds: they are all indifferent to fact. But even then her women are complements to her men-folk. This is so because they have a special honesty, honesty which comes of self-knowledge, and the power of distinguishing the essential from the accidental and non-accidental men and women are essentially different, but if there is love between them, the differences between their respective natures contribution to make a single whole, as if together they made up a human being more complete than either. Thus Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Ramsay are the natural complements of each other, together enjoying a fuller life than would have been possible far them separately. 

E-C-302 Research Methodology

Assignment Paper: - E-C-302 Research Methodology

Topic                     : - What is Research and its Characteristics of Research.

Student’s name    : - Vala Neeta T.

Roll no                 : - 20

URL                      :-valaneete391011.blogspot.com

Semester               : - 3

Batch                    : - 2010-11

                                                 Submitted to,

                                                 Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                 Department of English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

Ø Introduction:

                       The genesis of research lies in the progress of human life. As man embarked upon the road to progress his curiosity to know the happenings around his surrounding became very intense. The saga of development of man from ancient times to modern era is the result of research. Superstitions and some traditional beliefs in ancient times were used to be wrongly ascribed to knowledge. Man guardedly came out of these beliefs by way of research and inclined towards scientific knowledge. This scientific knowledge is nothing but the outcome of research.  Man from the very beginning strived to understand the nature and the universe. He also observed harmony every where in the universe and tried to find out the causal relationship underlying this harmony. This is how the beginning of scientific research was made. Initially inquiry into any matter or happening was used to be made by scientific method but there was lack of planning in making this inquiry. Much emphasis was given to experience of an individual to draw interences or conclusions from any happening in the nature or the universe without any cognizance of sufficient evidences or rational.

                        In the era of Aristotle and Greek philosophers new directions of research were opened up and foundations of scientific methods for research were established. Francis Bekom then made a strong plea for direct observation or experimentation. Initially deductive method of logic came into operation and later on inductive method of logic came into practice. In order to eliminate the imperfection of these methods, Charles Darwin suggested a new method known as deductive – inductive method by combining these two methods. This is how a new era of scientific method was started. Thus it can be said that the basis of scientific research lies in the implementation of deductive - methods of logic. The intensive use of scientific research was initially made in physics and later on it was extended natural sciences and social sciences.

                    Thus the scientific research has played a significant role for achieving human progress. The advances in research in the fields of physics, biology, social science and psychology have largely contributed to the creation of new knowledge, new invention and new ideas as well as new methodologies for carrying out further research. The modern research is not confined to laboratories only but has made strides in every field of human life. The scientific research has playing an important role in the progress and enrichment of education and educational research.

Ø Verbal Meaning and Definition of Research:

                  One can comprehend the meaning of research while undergoing the process of gaining experience of doing research by the way writing project report or Ph.D. thesis or dissertation on any topic of research. The use of research work of others by teachers in teaching a course, one can clearly understand the meaning of research. The dictionary meaning of research is construed as invention or investigation or formal study or scientific enquiry or discovery. The formal meaning of research is invention or scientific or scientific investigation or scientific enquiry to extract truth. Standards dictionaries describe research as “Endeavour to discover new ideas by scientific way”, or “A course of critical investigation”.

                   According to Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, research means “A careful investigation or investigation or inquiry especially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge.”

                  In the meaning of “Research’ given above three words are important (1) Study (2) Invention (3) discovery. The last two words require special description.

Ø Invention:

                   Inverntion is the application of an idea or thinking something new. For example, a new machine or an instrument or a new way of doing a task.

Ø Discovery:

                   Discovery is an accidental, unintentional and unexpressed search for the first time without any problem.

Research: Research is nothing but a scientific study in order to discover new facts. It has a problem and deals with activities and solution. Research is a planned activity for solving a problem which is purposeful, interitional with respect to outcomes. Research is a systematic investigation of problem in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.

                 Some interpretations of research given in English language support the above meaning of research and we cite the following quotations which provide a comprehensive meaning of research. “Research is endless quest for knowledge or understanding search for truth. It brings to light new knowledge or correct previous errors and misconceptions and ads in an orderly way to existing body of knowledge.”

           “The knowledge gained by research is scientific and objectives and is a matter of rational understanding, common verification and experience”

Definitions of Research given by some well-know thinkers are given below:

v George G. Mouly;

                     “A systematic and scholarly application of scientific method, interpreted in its broadest sense, to the solution of educational problems. Conversely, any systematic study designed to promote the development of education as a science can be considered as educational research.

v F.M. Kerlinger (1978);

                    “Scientific research is a systematic, controlled empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical proposition about the presumed relations among natural phenomena.”

Ø Characteristics of Research:-

Some salient features and characteristics of research are stated below,

Research generates new knowledge.

Research is a skillful, systematic and accurate procedure of investigation.

Research is logical and objective.

Research is a sustaining and unhurried procedure of investigation.

Research endeavors to collect and organize data in quantitative terms.

Research requires courage and entrepreneurship.

Research is highly objective or purposive.

Research requires rigorous standards.

Research is a procedure of carefully representing and recording documents.

Research aims is extracting and generalizing common principles.

Research is meticulously planned.

Research requires perfect accuracy in collection, recording and analyzing the data.

Research requires neutral and unbiased approach.

Research is free from emotions.

Research is an objective process.

Research is verifiable and amenable to testing.

Research is an inquiry or investigation.

Research involves clearly defined parameters.

Research describes the problem.

Research explains and generalizes the problem under study and seeks its solution.

Research predicts the phenomenon under study.

Research is a critical, systematic and empirical inquiry conducted under controlled conditions.

E-C-303 American Literature

Assignment Paper: - E-C-303 American Literature

Topic                     : - Various themes in “The Scarlet Letter”

Student’s name     : - Vala Neeta T.

Roll no                 : - 20

URL                      : - valaneeta391011.blogspot.com

Semester               : - 3

Batch                    : - 2010-11

                                               

                                                 Submitted to,

                                                 Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                 Department of English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

Themes in “The Scarlet Letter”

v Sin and Judgment:-

Hawthorne's novel consistently calls into question the notion of sin and what is necessary for redemption. Is Hester's initial crime a sin? She married Chillingworth without quite understanding the commitment she made, and then she had to live without him while he was abroad, and then fell in love with Dimmesdale--perhaps discovering the feeling for the first time. Is the sin, then, committing adultery with Dimmesdale and breaking her vow and commitment, or is the sin first marrying Chillingworth without thinking it through? And what is Chillingworth's sin? Essentially abandoning his wife for so long upon their marriage, or failing to forgive her once he knew of the crime? Is Dimmesdale's sin his adultery or his hypocritical failure to change his sermon themes after the fact? Or are all of these things sins of different degrees? For each kind of sin, we wonder if the punishment fits the crime and what must be done, if anything, to redeem the sinner in the eyes of society as well as in the eyes of the sinner himself or herself. We also should remember that what the Puritans thought of as sin was different from what went for sin in Hawthorne's time, both being different from what many Christians think of as sin today. This should not teach us moral relativism, but it should encourage us to be wary of judging others.

v Punishment vs. Forgiveness:-

                   One of the more compelling themes of the novel is embodied by Chillingworth, who seems the arbiter of moral judgment in the story, since Dimmesdale--the minister and the supposed purveyor of righteousness--is himself tainted as a party to the crime. Chillingworth is surprisingly forgiving of Hester's crime. We sense that he understands why she would forsake him. After all, he is deformed, he is older, he has not been nearby, while she is beautiful and passionate. Indeed, we get the feeling that Chillingworth's self-loathing allows him to forgive Hester, but this attribute also increases the relentlessness and rage with which he goes after Dimmesdale. In Dimmesdale, he sees the vigor and passion which Hester desires and which he himself does not possess. Like a leech, he's out to suck Dimmesdale of his life force, not just to punish the minister for the crime of fornicating with his wife, but also to symbolically appropriate Dimmesdale's virility. And as the novel continues, Chillingworth seems to grow stronger while Dimmesdale seems to weaken. That pattern continues until Dimmesdale dies in an act of defiance, his public demonstration of guilt, which essentially leaves Chillingworth stripped bare of his power to punish or forgive.

v Civilization Versus the Wilderness:-

                     In The Scarlet Letter, the town and the surrounding forest represent opposing behavioral systems. The town represents civilization, a rule-bound space where everything one does is on display and where transgressions are quickly punished. The forest, on the other hand, is a space of natural rather than human authority. In the forest, society’s rules do not apply, and alternate identities can be assumed. While this allows for misbehavior— Mistress Hibbins’s midnight rides, for example—it also permits greater honesty and an escape from the repression of Boston. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods, for a few moments, they become happy young lovers once again. Hester’s cottage, which, significantly, is located on the outskirts of town and at the edge of the forest, embodies both orders. It is her place of exile, which ties it to the authoritarian town, but because it lies apart from the settlement, it is a place where she can create for herself a life of relative peace.

v The Nature of Evil:-

                  The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the “Black Man,” the embodiment of evil. Over the course of the novel, the “Black Man” is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress Hibbins, and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devil’s child. The characters also try to root out the causes of evil: did Chillingworth’s selfishness in marrying Hester force her to the “evil” she committed in Dimmesdale’s arms? Is Hester and Dimmesdale’s deed responsible for Chillingworth’s transformation into a malevolent being? This confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals the problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true evil arises from the close relationship between hate and love. As the narrator points out in the novel’s concluding chapter, both emotions depend upon “a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent . . . upon another.” Evil is not found in Hester and Dimmesdale’s lovemaking, nor even in the cruel ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed revenge of Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is the “Black Man,” because her father, too, has perverted his love. Dimmesdale, who should love Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel denial of love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.

v Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition:-

                       Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their humanness, that which separates them from the divine and from other creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil and to procreate—two “labors” that seem to define the human condition. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge—specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread,” leading her to “speculate” about her society and herself more “boldly” than anyone else in New England. As for Dimmesdale, the “burden” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs.” His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of empathy. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus, they view sin as a threat to the community that should be punished and suppressed. Their answer to Hester’s sin is to ostracize her. Yet, Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdale’s experience shows that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth, sympathy, and understanding of others. Paradoxically, these qualities are shown to be incompatible with a state of purity.