Instructions and model for text to text connection (modern scandal) with *The Scarlet Letter*

A Modern Scandal Project

These instructions are very loose. Decide what you want to you use and develop your ideas. The key thing is that you have quotes from both texts and make a commentary on any aspect of the novel, 

 culture, or people. 

·       Describe your person and what they've done to be shunned or the “crime” that they have committed. 

·       Then describe how the "shunning"/ crime/ punishment has affected them,

·       Compare the person to Hester Prynne, or other major character or event from the text. 

·       Make an inference or commentary public "shunning” or culture/ character as a whole. 

·       And/or what punishment/ letter should they receive?

THIS IS A WORKING DRAFT:

In a recent Radiolab episode titled “Patient Zero”, they make reference to a person called Gaetan Dugas. Mr. Dugas was known as Patient Zero for the AIDS epidemic. He was responsible for knowingly spreading the AIDS virus inside the homosexual communities in New York and LA. From his partners, the virus became an epidemic. For his “crime” of committing “murder”, I think he should have to wear the number “0” (G for genesis?). This would tell people that he was the one that started the epidemic.

Later in the episode, in response to Dr. Selma Dritz asking why he’s continuing to sleep with people even though he knows he has “gay cancer”, Dugas responds by saying, “My right to do whatever I want. My civil rights. I do as I please. I’ve got it, so why shouldn’t they have it?” This act of selfishness during trauma or sickness is something that I think plagues a number of people. We want others to share in our misery. However, this is what separates Hester from Dugas. It would be so easy for her to give up the name of the father, however, she chooses not to. Hester, in her strength, chooses to keep her suffering to herself. She doesn’t even share it with Pearl. As such, when Dimmesdale argues that she should keep the child, he notes, “this boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother’s soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths of sin…” (102). And although he’s talking about the child, since both Hester and Dimmesdale see the two as synonymous, I think the connection still holds. Hester, unlike Dugas, doesn’t slip into “blacker depths of sin” when met with judgment and death (physical or moral as it may be). She elects to use her punishment (the letter) as a means to grow. Dugas, when met with the specter of death via “gay cancer” elects to commit what some would call murder.


I want to make clear that I don’t believe that AIDS is a punishment for anything. This analysis is an examination of how people behave when met with the consequences of their behavior, not whether the punishment fits the crime. To repeat, I do not believe that AIDS is a punishment.