In both the Scarlet Letter and the poem “Burning of our house”, the themes are strongly based on religious beliefs, and the characters in both of the books are all Puritans. In Scarlet Letter the characters often have similar appearances; they wear plain clothes and talk in a similar fashion. The villagers in Hester Prynne’s town were horrified when Hester committed adultery, and they punished her harshly. I think the punishments of Hester are strongly related to their religion. Anything not according to the Bible is often prohibited, and of course adultery is viewed as one of the most sinful crimes. Our society is based on justice legislation instead of religious beliefs, in our modern world, we won’t be punished in public if we commit adultery; our society gives us the right to keep our crime a secret. In the poem “burning of our house”, the writer blessed god for taking what she has, instead of getting upset about her unfortunate encounters. That is very different from our modern society, even now, religious believers won’t thank god for burning down their house, they will just be mad. The way the writer reacted about the burning of her house is strongly related to her religion. The Puritan religion believes god is the great architect, as mentioned in the poem, god made everything, and everything that the people have was given by god. Ann Bradstreet believes it is only right for god to take back what he gave, because it ultimately belongs to him. Our society is designed so we have to earn what we have, so when we lose our material possessions, we will be very upset.
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