Love Shackled By Religion

The influence of Christianity in western literature often highlights the tragic aspects of the Christian spirit. Many famous writers allude to suffering and guilt in their works. The ever-present concepts of sin and punishment, combined with those of love and forgiveness, are constant themes in western literature.The Scarlet Letter and The Thorn Birds are two great books that share the same theme----love shackled by religion.The Scarlet Letter has been credited as Hawthorne's masterpiece and a gem of American Romantic Literature. It marked a culmination of Hawthorne's talents and permanently established his reputation. The Scarlet Letter tells a story about sin and pain. The main characters in the story are all sinners. They all suffer greatly and fail to escape their doomed fate. In a similar vein, 127 years later, the Australian woman writer Colleen McCullough brought out her masterpiece The Thorn Birds. The Thorn Birds is an epic family saga. It follows the lives, loves and deaths of the Cleary family, spanning three generations from 1915 to 1965. Here, history repeats itself, for the love between Meggie and Ralph also ends in tragedy.Literature mirrors society, and the development of all societies has basic similarities which give rise to the revisiting of constant themes, especially those societies with a Christian philosophy. Therefore, it is possible to make a comparative study of the two books.The thesis is divided into six parts. The first part is an introduction. It briefly introduces the relationship between art and religion and the common themes shared by the two books. By comparing the different sins committed by the two heroines and their social backgrounds, the essay tries to reveal the reasoning behind the scenarios and explores the cross-cultural common ground of the two books.The second part compares the different writing backgrounds of the two authors. A comparative study is made of the different ages in which the two authors lived, along with a detailed explanation of their different cultural backgrounds. By...