The Mark of Cain and the Scarlet Letter represent 2 very different approaches to dealing with a person whose actions generate a lot of disapproval from his fellow citizens. The Mark of Cain ‘s focus was not one of letting the world know there was a murderer in their midst and therefore people could go ahead and kill him. On the contrary, God put a mark on Cain to show the world that he was protected by God, and that anybody who tried to kill him would face God’s wrath. Now God was protecting Cain not because he had in any way approved or accepted what he had done. After all, God had put a curse on Cain to wander the earth and experience the rejection and shunning from people who knew what a horrible act he had committed. The Mark of Cain signified God’s desire to somehow balance the punishment of the curse with an action that symbolized mercy.
With Hester Prynne, the adulteress who is forced to wear the Scarlet Letter in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, the situation is somewhat different. In Hester’s case, her wearing her symbol of having sinned is not meant to protect her from punishment as is the case with Cain’s symbol. Rather, it is meant to let the world know what she has done and to encourage rejection and shunning, to encourage social punishment. With Hester, the symbol used -the Scarlet Letter – is the trigger for people showing their disapproval of her. With Cain, the symbol used – the Mark of Cain – is the trigger for people to restrain their impulses to kill him, to restrain their impulses to show their disapproval in the most extreme way of all.
I was contemplating these two symbols recently within the context of which one of them might be more appropriate for representing Trump and the MAGA Republicans. I hesitate to apply the Mark of Cain to them, now that I really understand it, because it originally was meant by God to counteract the vulnerability that Cain felt to the side effects of God’s curse: namely that he was damned by God to wander the face of the earth, a perpetual outsider. Certainly, if there is a curse involved with Trump and his followers, it has primarily been going out from them towards other Americans rather than back towards Trump and MAGA. Except that the working-class Americans who are in MAGA may be about to experience what could be described as a curse as the effects of all the government programs that have been gutted, become manifest. But, so far, nothing so terrible that it can be described as a curse has made itself apparent in Trump’s life. Or in Musk’s life (although losing all the business for his Teslas must certainly be more than just an annoyance). One might say that the fact that Trump was impeached twice during his first term and became a convicted felon shortly before his second term began was enough to have him considered to be cursed. For most people having such occurrences in their lives would be enough to make them feel quite damned. But Trump has an incredible facility for turning lemons into lemonade. Every time he is publicly shamed in some situation, he has a way of presenting it to his followers that he is being persecuted by his enemies, and this stimulates his followers to back him more fervently than ever. It is as if Trump is immune to what most people would consider curses. And without a recognition of certain situations being signs of curses, Trump could hardly benefit in any way from any marks or perceptions of marks to protect him. He is incapable of absorbing any negative imprints regarding people’s attitudes towards him or with regard to the obviously failed policies people perceive in him. Any imprint that has the potential to be a negative for Trump, he finds a way of turning it into a positive.
So, I guess we may have to wait a little longer to determine what kind of mark is going to be appropriate for designating all of Trump’s misdeeds to the world. And the key word here is all. Cain wore his mark for one specific event: the murder of his brother. Granted that that is a pretty awful event, and Trump has not engaged in murder yet. However, he has talked about being able to murder someone on a New York City street in broad daylight and nothing would happen to him. In addition, his cutting of foreign aid to places like Sudan, has already led to some deaths as a result of starvation. And, unfortunately, there will be many, many more.
As to Hester, her Scarlett Letter was based on the genuine Puritan belief that adultery was a sin. In modern America, adultery itself seems to elicit a yawn among many people. What has been concerning with Trump has been his tendency to turn acts of adultery into rape.
There are so many other immoral actions with regard to Trump. His stiffing of people who work for him. The way he has treated immigrants while president. The list seems endless. Which leads us to the following thought: could one mark possibly be capable of covering the multitude of sins in so many different areas that Trump has committed?
© 2025 Laurence Mesirow
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