FREE ESSAY ON THE SCARLET LETTER

THE SCARLET LETTER

The Beast in the Jungle is a vivid tale of two friends lives intertwined and lost through
their own beliefs composed by Henry James. The story is through the perspective of the
main character, John Marcher, who believes his life is destined towards an unknown
disaster. Through curiosity that turned to love, May Batram, stays by her friend, John
Marcher's side through the duration of his wasted life as they both watched and waited
for the imaginary disaster to occur. The disaster was the reason for not living his life
and letting it slip through his fingers unknown. Life must be lived.
May Batram was curious and inquisitive of Marcher's thought, a curiosity that turned into
loyal love for Marcher. When Marcher had first met May it had been in Naples, though to
his recollection it had been Rome. May put him in the right and he "accepted her
amendments, enjoyed her corrections," (407). He was holding her in high regard now as he
had ten years prior when he told her of his secret. This secret was one quoted from
Marcher by May as from "(his) earliest time, as the deepest thing within (him), the sense
of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly terrible," (411). 
May had an eagerness for knowledge in her younger years with the aim of witnessing
Marcher's disaster. Throughout ten years of not seeing each other May remembered and
quoted John Marcher's words about his secret whereas he had "lost the consciousness of
having taken (her) so far into (his) confidence" (410) and "that he really didn't
remember the least thing about her" (407). May was ever intrigued by Marcher and vowed
that in being "the only person in the world" (410) to know of Marcher's secret she would
"watch with (him)" (414) for the disaster which was yet to come. Marcher's forgetfulness
and sudden decision making tended to lend aid to his not seizing life and let him
continue with his created disaster dragging May down it's path of wasted years along
side.
For years May and Marcher used themselves to look normal, and May often remarked, "What
saves us, you know, is that we answer so completely to so usual an appearance: that of a
man and a woman whose friendship has become such a daily habit, or almost, as to be at
last indispensable" (420). As the years crept by May and Marcher constantly see each
other still waiting and watching for what was never to occur on it's own. On such a visit
they got to discussing the situation of themselves and of the apparent lack of a
catastrophe. Marcher, concerned that May had wasted her interests on nothing, commented
that, "Doesn't it sometimes come to you, as time goes on, that you curiosity is not being
particularly repaid?" (421). This was the day May told him her watch was over and her
curiosity satisfied. When he asked if it was all over, the end of their watch she said,
"this is not the end of our watch. That is it isn't the end of yours. You have everything
still to see" (424). Marcher being scared that she knew something stated "You know
something I do not. You know what is to happen. It's so bad you're afraid I'll find out"
(424). This was the point when May had realized that nothing Marcher had ever believed
would happened would happen and that he had wasted his life and she had inevitably wasted
hers as well through her love and loyalty to him.
May was failing in health and kept her realization nobly to herself in her love for
Marcher and of him not having to take the fact that everything in life he had waited and
lived, or not lived for, was all for nothing. On day before she died, she said to Marcher
of what did and was happening that "includes all the loss and all the shame that are
unthinkable" (433). After her death Marcher traveled to Asia for a year before returning,
still ignorant to his life, or lack there of. He visited May's grave and this was where
the realization May wished and prayed he would not come to hit him and "how hugely it
glared at him!" (450). Marcher "had not lived" (450) and "she had prayed he mightn't
know" (450). In the end Marcher had been hit with his disaster, on he waited his whole
life for and manifested himself, when this realization hit him, "the Beast had indeed
lurked, and the Beast, in it's hour, had sprung" (450). Life must be lived, not waited
around for.
Bibliography
The Scarlet Letter, Henry James