Early in my life I read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Seeing it as an assignment, however, I could not fully understand how to make judgment on its subject matter, nor could I appreciate the novel. Then, required only to decide whether I like it, my answer was simple: "It was a...

Joseph K. Hart once said, "No child can escape his community...The life of the community flows about him, foul or pure; he swims in it, goes to sleep in it, and wakes to the new days to find it still about him. He belongs to it' it nourishes or starves him, or poisons him; it gives him the substanc...