The Scarlet Letter is a work so suffused with moral intensity that even the commas seem to blush. Hawthorne’s Puritan New England is a place where daylight feels like cross-examination, and every whisper sounds like scripture. Sin, here, isn't merely an act — it’s a neighbourhood watch. The story begins, quite literally, with a symbol … Continue reading The Scarlet Letter – Sin, Society, and the Theatre of Virtue
Tag: God
On Living Like Birds and Lilies: A Reflection
Some days I wake with a weight on my chest before I’ve even opened my eyes, as though the worries of tomorrow have crept into the room during the night and perched themselves on my ribs. Recently my life has been a little upside down. I’m finding things difficult. It’s a very modern feeling, but … Continue reading On Living Like Birds and Lilies: A Reflection
Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
Northern pilgrimages — those walks that feel less like a journey to a holy place and more like a negotiation with eternity. Down south, a pilgrimage is a gentle stroll between tea rooms, the sort of thing you might undertake with a guidebook and sensible shoes. Up here, the guidebook will be soaked within a … Continue reading Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
ROSEMARY’S BABY — A Psychological Reflection
What book are you reading right now? There are some novels that pretend to be about the devil but are, in truth, about the far more distressing creatures that live under our own ribs. Rosemary’s Baby is one of them. On the surface it’s a story about covens, conspiracies, ancient rituals, and a baby with … Continue reading ROSEMARY’S BABY — A Psychological Reflection
The Baritone at the Gate: A Requiem for the Living
‘Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death.’— Libera me, D There’s a certain note — not the pitch itself, but the tremor beneath it — that seems to belong only to men who’ve seen too much. It’s the sound of the baritone in Fauré’s Requiem, that grave, human register which stands between the innocence of … Continue reading The Baritone at the Gate: A Requiem for the Living
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