As social beings, men can not avoid being affected by the dominant ideologies of their time. At the same time, asanimals with intellect, they inevitably have their own passions and thoughts. When thrown into a society, they will constantly findthemselves tortured by their natural self and their social consciousness. In the face of such a conflict, ego, which refers to therational, thoughtful and realistic personality process, plays its part in meditating the conflict. By discussing briefly the three maincharacters’ struggling egos in The Scarlet Letter, we can see clearly that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work reflects the above fact. heholds that man is not able to escape the influence of the society, on the other hand, he is not the least dismayed at human beings’comparative mental freedom.
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