Moral Development

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

AP Language

Student Activity

For this novel, you will keep a dialectical journal, or reader-response journal, of a different kind. You will chart each main character’s stages of moral development. Read the information below about Kohlberg’s six levels of moral development.

In 1964, Lawrence Kohlberg argued that children progress through a sequence of stages, representing different orientations to moral rules and values. To study the development of moral judgment, Kohlberg devised hypothetical moral dilemmas. Each dilemma usually presents a conflict between obedience to law and response to human needs. Responses to these dilemmas are used to draw conclusions about the development of moral judgment. The dilemma below, “Henry’s Accident,” is patterned after the moral dilemmas Kohlberg used.

Henry’s Accident

Once there was a man named Henry, who lived in a small town. Early one morning Henry and his wife were driving to town along a winding country road. It was still very early in the morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise. A very heavy fog still covered the road, however. It was very difficult for Henry to see where he was driving. Suddenly, there was a sharp curve in the road. Henry lost control of the car. The car went off the road and crashed into a large oak tree.

Henry was not hurt, but his wife was lying unconscious on the floor of the front seat. Henry did not know how badly she was hurt, but he was very worried because it might be hours before another car came along the isolated road.

Henry’s car was completely smashed, and there were no other cars passing by on the road. There were no houses in sight. But Henry did see a small farm truck with the keys locked in it.

So he broke the truck’s window, put his wife into the truck, and drove her to the hospital. Should Henry have stolen the truck? Why?

On the basis of responses to dilemmas similar to this...