The Scarlet Letter is set
in one of the most tumultuous eras in American history, those years
when people from Europe were trying to create a new home for
themselves in an alien and sometimes hostile land. The problems they
faced transcended simple survival. They were also concerned with the
treatment or mistreatment of the Indians, the growth and spread of
Christianity, and whether or not the Eden they had sailed so far to
create would ever become a reality. Other tumultuous times have
produced similar tumultuous situation: the "roaring" twenties and our
current pre-millennial decade, to name two. Yet as odd as it may
seem, when we examine the issues of these two time periods, we see a
sometimes vague, but often very real connection with
Hawthorne.
