My Community

I love to program, and so I’m active in communities where I can program frequently. I participate in the independent game development community and in multiple open source software projects. Both of these communities emphasize creation and creativity.

Game development is a multifaceted activity; good game creators need to be able to program, design games, and write stories. It also helps to be able to make art, create sounds, or handle marketing and business. I’ve created games as part of 48 hour game jams, requiring meticulous time management and rapid development. I love to spend time talking with professional game developers about what they’re working on, but even though the game development community is close, most of the time we end up working solo or with only a small team.

In open source on the other hand, we may have to collaborate with hundreds of people and reconcile our approach with the goals of the project as a whole. When I’m contributing to someone else’s project, I have to simultaneously try to handle the component I’m working on and discuss how it will mesh with the rest of the design.

Both of these communities have similar goals. In software development we try to solve problems for your users, and in games we seek to provide experiences that enrich our players’ lives. The part that I love the most in both communities is that I can join smart people solving interesting and difficult problems, and make things that others can enjoy.

Good and Evil in Young Goodman Brown

Everyone knows about good vs. evil; most of our media is made up of characters that fit into one box or the other. But it’s not possible to stuff a real person into one of those boxes. Judging people as being either totally good or absolutely evil is absurd, but it simply composes one of the many facets that make up the Puritan worldview. Nathaniel Hawthorne was very interested in the Puritans’ obsession with sin and judgement. In his short story “Young Goodman Brown,” he explores a young Puritan’s struggle reconciling his worldview with his life as he goes into the forest, meets the devil, and sees things that he can’t believe. The story is Hawthorne’s criticism of the Puritan view of good and evil.

The worldview is built upon a false premise. Clearly people can be good but commit some sins, and this is evident in the story. Brown’s village is essentially made of good, kind people. The minister blesses Brown as he passes, and the deacon is praying (6). “Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian” is teaching a little girl in the morning (6), and his wife Faith is so cheerful and friendly. These are good people, clearly, but in Goodman Brown’s eyes they are all practically devils. Seeing Goody Close, he “snatches away the child, as from the grasp of the fiend himself.” This is clearly a disproportionate response to what appears to have been singing and dancing around a fire in the middle of the forest (5), only committing highly abstract sin by listening to the sermon of the “devil,” but not actually harming anyone. On the path, Goodman Brown sees Goody Cloyse, and quickly thinks her evil for simply being there, and being associated with the devil that he’s walking with, even though he knows she’s the good woman who taught him his catechisms (3). The worldview seems at odds with all common sense if it demands one must reject people — no matter how virtuous — at a single sin.

That same rejection makes it a very fragile and harmful belief. In a single night, he learns that everyone sins (5, 6), but instead of realizing that everyone is complex, he takes to heart the notion that “evil is the nature of mankind” (6). Any faith which can be shattered in a single night cannot be very strong faith. The belief harms people by holding them to unreasonable standards, and then sets one up for constant disappointment when they fail to do the impossible. In Brown’s case, holding this belief ruins his life. “Had [he] fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of witch meeting?” (6) But even with that doubt, Brown is unable to trust anyone, becoming a “sad […] distrustful, if not desperate man.” The belief destroys his own faith in his community, and his interaction with it.

Hawthorne disapproved of the beliefs of the Puritans, but it doesn’t take a Puritan to judge. He illustrates how looking at people in a binary sense does both them and ourselves a disservice. Anyone can fall prey to this, and we would do well to heed Hawthorne: do not believe like the Puritans, look at people complexly and deeply.

First Semester Final Essay

Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience presents a rather pessimistic picture of the present society, but a picture of a future society which many people would view as almost hopelessly optimistic. His theories are made somewhat more understandable when presented with an example like that of Hester Prynne from Nathanial Hawethorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hester embodies the aspects of Thoreau’s individial — “living aloof from [society], not meddling with it nor embraced by it,” as Hester is seperated from the society by what amounts to banishment. At the same time, Hester’s actions fit Thoreau’s other requirements of “[fulfilling] all dutis of neighbors and fellow men.” Hester perfectly fits Thoreaus’ ideas as an essentially good person — but she is ahead of her time in a society that’s incompatible with Thoreau’s ideal “State.”

Thoreau invisions a state in which a few can “live aloof from it,” and Hester certainly does this — Thoreau’s call of “not meddling with it,” is evident when Hester interacts with most people. She’s deferent and doesn’t speak with most people; she has no with to directly influence the members of the society. She is also “not embraced by it,” she literally lives seperate — outside of town in a small house — showing her isolation from the town. It is suggested that she doesn’t even participate to the same extent in the church — which reveals her as very isolated with respect to the averate puritan. Hester lives apart from the community, as at times ostracised by it, but that doesn’t affect her impact as a human being.

For although the community has all but rejected her, Hester most certainly “fullfill[s] all the duties of neighbors and fellow men.” The Scarlet Letter descrives Hester as always being there for the sick. Even attending to their bedside, certainly going above and beyond her neighborly duty. It is not her only act of charity however — much of the money she makes sewing she donates to the poorer members of society. Hester is essentially good and kind — depsite her situtation. She fits into thoreau’s model even if her society does not.

While Hester fits Thoreau perfectly, Puritan society is diametrically opposed to a society that “treats the individual with respect as a neighbor.” The Puritan society is all about control from above, not with the freedom that Thoreau advocates. The Puritans center around their religion, and can’t stand those outside it — as such, justice is heavily dependent on personal status. The Scarlet Letter presents a socity which overreacts to crimes which essentially do not harm anyone, and metes out punishments which are better served by the behavior of the person sentenced.

All in all, it’s remarkable that Hester is able to live a life which is so free from her society in a society which is all but free. Her success in the face of and adverse society — while fictional — still provides a good illustraction of how in an ideal society people can perhaps be trusted to independent of it.

The Responsibility of Redemption in The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter

Guilt can consume people and wear away at them until they are forced by their conscience to seek redemption. In the Novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the authors show the devastating effects guilt can have. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne gives up her comfortable life so that she can be honest about her sin, embracing it as a way to overcome her shame. The same book’s other character, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, hides his sin and stews in it, his life consumed by his secret guilt. The Crucible’s John Proctor likewise is tortured by his own guilt, and it is only through his final sacrifice that he is able to make up for his mistakes. Through their characters, Miller and Hawthorne illustrate the necessity of taking responsibility for one’s mistakes, showing how ownership of a sin allows one to achieve atonement for their guilt.

The main characters of The Scarlet Letter feel guilty; a pressure is placed upon them because they feel they have done wrong. Guilt is having the feeling that one has failed within their own ideals, and that they are personally responsible. Interestingly enough, all of the characters being examined committed adultery, but they react to it different ways. Hester feels she has let down society and herself. While she felt that she had betrayed her husband, he releases her from that, telling her that “we have wronged each other” (Hawthorne 66). He decides that he has no desire take her back as his wife, and asks her to simply keep their relationship secret, and so the bond between them is all the much weaker. When all she has betrayed is society that throws her out and shuns her, it becomes much easier for her to take responsibility for what she has done and do what is right for herself. Dimmesdale is not only worried about his affront to society, but also to the shame he will bring his office. He feels he cannot admit his sins or he will destroy his reputation and the reputation of his church by association, and so he cannot free himself of the weight that he faces. Hawthorne believes that keeping secrets is a terrible, miserable thing for a person to have to do — so much so The Scarlet Letter says of Dimmesdale’s secret that “it is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it the [substance] out of [what was meant] to be the spirit’s joy and nutriment” (Hawthorne 131). John Proctor is similarly trapped; he only feels that his indiscretion has betrayed his wife and himself, but he cannot admit his crime or he will likely be killed, letting her down.

They all suffer more under their guilt than under the actual punishment for their crimes or sins. Proctor strains his relationship with his wife, to the extent that when he remarks that “it’s Winter in here yet,” he’s not speaking of the season, but of the cold emotions in their house (Miller 51). Furthermore, when he is in prison, he feels he is responsible for the disaster, that his own pride gave Abigail her motivation to start the trials and accuse people. His guilt over that makes him waste away, he is lethargic and “his eyes misty” (Miller 133). Dimmesdale is similarly consumed by his guilt. He suffers tremendously, wasting with a disease bourne only of his guilt, and he tortures himself, whipping himself, fasting, and going without sleep (Hawthorne 130). He carves a secret letter A into his own chest to face his own guilt, but it doesn’t help him. As he himself says, appealing to Hester to reveal the adulterer (himself), “yet better were it [to be publicly shamed], than to hide a guilty heart through life” (Hawthorne 59). Hester faces a different suffering than the others, for her sin is revealed from the start. She faces the ostracism of the community for her crime and is placed out on the outskirts of town, but internally she suffers far less than the other characters because of it. Hester accepts her position, sewing her scarlet letter bright and large. Of the characters, Hester suffers the least because she begins her atonement right away.

In the end, by taking responsibility for their sins, all of these characters are able to achieve redemption. Hester accepts her place and did good towards the community instead of lashing back at them. Hester goes to help various people, and The Scarlet Letter says that “In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place” (Hawthorne 144). Hester was once again accepted, and her A was reinterpreted as “Able” (Hawthorne 145). Her forgiveness came because she was able to accept her place, and so others could accept her too. Proctor also gained his first redemption by admitting his crime, his wife forgave him after he did so, but by delaying so long he broke the chance for complete redemption. In the end Proctor takes responsibility for Abigail’s accusations, and sacrifices himself so that the trials will be overthrown. It is because of his final sacrifice that he is able to admit “I do see some shred of goodness in [myself]” (Miller 144). Dimmesdale also dies, and he declares his sin as he is dying so that he may finally have peace. The thing that tormented him the most was the guilt of his crime: he carved a secret letter A into the flesh of his chest because he is so conflicted, and he wastes away as he stews in his guilt. He lives for seven years in agony of his secret and when he finally gets up onto the scaffold to give himself up he is full of energy, and an almost mad joy. When he finally admits it, he stands “with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory” (Hawthorne 273).

The authors make it no secret that they think that sins should be admitted to honestly so that they can be repaired and forgiven. In The Scarlet Letter, keeping a secret guilt is presented as the most painful punishment imaginable, and Hester’s situation in having her guilt known is presented as being eventually resolved as a good thing. While the practice of Puritanism was often harsh, the ideals of it were based upon forgiveness, as can be seen in John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” in which he says “we must love brotherly without dissimulation, […] we must bear one another’s burdens,” and the ideal of forgiveness is also evident when he commands the Puritans “to love mercy.” Admitting sins in order to be forgiven by the community and by God was an important step. While the sin and atonement presented in the two stories are of religious nature, the principle that is presented doesn’t have to be applied religiously. In a more general sense, these stories serve as a lesson in responsibility — people must take personal responsibility their mistakes so that they can then fix them, and so that others have a chance to offer forgiveness for the mistakes.

Bibliography

‘John Winthrop Calls Massachusetts Bay Colony “a City upon a Hill”’ Excerpted from “A Model of Christian Charity,” 1630 (In class handout)

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1976. Print.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: New American Library, 1999. Print.