Hell is - other people. Reading of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

¨  Hell is – other people.

                                                - No Exit. A play by Satre (spoken by Garcin, a journalist)

    To most of us, having relationships with other people is one of the most important aspects of our lives, part of what gives our lives their meaning. But relationships with others are actually hell.

   To understand this idea we have to take a long detour into the Existentialists' take on the existence of others. 

    Ever since Descartes, Western philosophy has been bedeviled by two related philosophical problems that are both forms of skepticism. The first is labeled 'skepticism about the external world' and is based on the belief that we have immediate access only to the contents of our own minds or consciousness. The problem with this view is that we ordinarily believe in the existence of objects external to our minds, like the computer on which I am typing this sentence. The point is, if we have immediate access only to the contents of our own minds, as this view requires, how can we justify our belief in the existence of these 'external things'? Is there no real justification for thinking that there is a world of things 'our there', that is, external to our own minds? According to this skeptical point of view, even our own bodies have a problematic status because they are not immediately recongnizable a part of who or what we are. These views pose serious problems that philosophers working within the Cartesian tradition have to attempt to solve. 

    The second problem facing post-Cartesian philosophers concerns the existence of other people and, more specifically their minds. Although we all believe that there are others besides ourselves in the world, it is not easy to say what justifies this belief. Even if we allow that we have knowledge of the existence of bodies in the world that resemble our own, the question remains us to our justification for believing that there are minds 'attached' to those bodies that are like our own minds in important ways. We have privileged access to our minds are therefore we know that they exist but the same we lack in the case of other people's minds. Thus, the skeptical problem of other minds is how to justify our ordinary belief in the reality of them. So skeptic asserts that we have direct access to the contents of our minds and thus know that our minds exist. This is the point of Descartes' "I think therefore I am." But this we lack in the case of others as we are barred from having direct access to their minds. He points out that we cannot really ever know that there are minds 'attached' to the bodies that we see 'out there' that look similar to our own. As a result, we cannot have knowledge of the existence of minds other than our own. 

    The world in which we live is a world that we share with who like us and of whose existence we can be sure.

    Heidegger's use of the word Dasein. Dasein: ‘there’ (da) and ‘being’ (sein). Dasein – Being there. (developed by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time. For human beings)

  Dasein is to exist in a world with other Daseins existing alongside oneself. In other words, Dasein’s way of being-in-the-world is always being-with.

    He claims that it is through our interactions with everyday things such as tables and chairs that we first encounter other humans, for we realize that it is part of our experience of the world that it be populated by other humans, other Daseins. Why is it so?

  Because there are things that I encounter in my world - implements (Zeug) - that bear the traces of those of those others who made them in such a way that they can fulfill a need of those who come across them. Heidegger puts it as Dasein's world is, simply put, a world populated with other Daseins. For this reason, Heidegger conceptualizes it as a with-world. The world in which we live is a world that we share with others who are like us and of whose existence we can be sure. 

  Who are these Daseins that we both are and encounter in our world? His answer is: these Daseins are a they. - Heidegger

   The consciousness of the presence of the 'they' invokes a norm or standard of behavior that holds within a community and asserts that members of the community are simply to that norm or standard. On Heidegger’s view, the others we encounter exist in the mode of a They or a One is to say that they are part of a community that imposes standards on individual Daseins that specify how a Dasein is to behave. To be a Dasein is to find oneself a member of a community of Dasein that promulgates standards of behavior.

  What about an individual? About their freedom? Importance is given to freedom. According to Satre humans were essentially nihilating beings, creatures who were  able to structure their own behavior instead of being determined  by nature to behave in pre-established ways.

  What happens when a nihilating being encounters others in the form of a They? The They expects that the encountering person will conform to Their standards of behavior. The They extends its presence into virtually all aspects of a person’s life.  One has to behave in a way expected by the They, to belong to the group, to be accepted by the They. The philosophical moral is, ‘dominance of the They’ forces us to give up our freedom, by accepting standards set by a specific community of others. In place of our capacity to be free initiators of actions, our initial encounters with other influence us to become conformists, and we are pushed to behave in a way that are socially acceptable. “Everyone is the other, and no one is himself.” Heidegger in Being and Time, 165). According to Satre others take our freedom from us, just as we take it from them.We find ourselves with the depressing sense that others enforce social conformity by getting us to behave as they want us to rather than as we would like. Jealousy – all other emotions – structure our lives in a more fundamental way. According to Satre, Jealousy colors our entire world. For example: Othello. Iago suggests to Othello that his wife, Desdemona, is having an affair with Cassio. His entire world is oriented towards this emotion and every object becomes a sign he tries to interpret in order to confirm his suspicion. For example misplaced handkerchief. Othello is so dominated by his jealousy that it permeates everything he sees. His world becomes projection of his jealousy sees devastating result. 

   Because of this an individual just becomes a ‘thing’ in the world of others. As a result of this an individual no longer exists as he/she did previously, for his/her awareness of being seen changes the nature of his existence. Awareness of the existence of others is what Satre calls ‘the look’. It is called objectification or reification.

 The theme of the other is a threat to our existence.

   For Satre, my primary experience of the other is as the cause of my objectification, the loss of my being, as I am placed into the other’s world. When I attempt to regain my self, I do so by objectifying the other, for only in so far as I succeed in doing so, will I succeed in regaining my world. The answer to the question: Is hell other people? Yes. They are. Their look pulls us out of our own world and turns us into an object of theirs.

  Task: Thinks of all the different ways in which you have felt the pressure to conform to standards that others have set, but that you did not feel comfortable with.

Reading of The Scarlet Letter: 

    The Scarlet Letter is a romance, a story of a young beautiful woman Hester Prynne, and adulteress, who has given birth to a daughter out of her wedlock. This is how critics, text-come-guides etc... introduce the novel. By applying the theme of the Other in the novel, I differ in my opinion. I personally believe that the novel is about the society - the they, who are very much present in the lives of each of the character. The they have given shapes to the lives of the individuals in the novel. The they have structured it so deeply that it is almost impossible to make the self free from the shackles of society. The Scarlet Letter 'A' is worthy of multiple interpretation. So I would rather see it as a story of a particular community. It is the story of people with self-imposed identity as 'representatives of religion'. It is the look of the people which has given birth such a hellish incident. The look of the people has reduced individuals to the level of mere 'thing' only. Individuals with their different capacities try hard to regain their original identity. 

    The Scaffold scene in the market is an example of the theme of community which very much prevails in the novel. It shows the interest of people in the lives of individuals. In the very opening scene Hester, with her baby-three months old daughter Pearl, is punished and forced to stand on the scaffold. She is there to face the look of the people. 

    " Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!"

   Hester, with A on her bosom and a three months baby in her hand becomes a center of attraction for people. People think, "This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. 

    People were curious to know about Hester and her Sin. It is the people who have transformed the very act of creation in Sin. The Puritan mentality looks at love as a taboo. So they have given a badge to Hester as punishment. But it doesn't matter much for Hester. She, with her daughter Pearl, lives in the forest and creates her own community. Forest is a place where both the mother and the daughter express their wildness of innocence. 

    Whereas the case with Dimmesdale is different. He is also present at the scaffold scene. It is because of the fear of people he could not show courage to come forward and confess. He could not accept it in public that he is the father of the child. He lives with the burden and has reduced himself to thing in his own eyes also. He is very much aware about the existence of others in the world and the fear of the others does not allow him to be what actually he is. He merely displays false hypocrisy as he is ashamed or afraid  of what he has done. Dimmesdale is an individual who, because of the fear of the other, cannot accept his responsibility. He has given much priority to his relationship with the others, with his position, with other ministers. Perhaps this is the reason that he could not bear pain of his deed. Just after confession he dies. Death has allowed him to escape. He does not remain in the texture of the novel to see the strange look of people towards him. 

     So Hell is - the other. It is the other people who have created a very horrible condition in individual's life.