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Critical analysis of scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Critical analysis of scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Critical analysis of scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Power of Guilt in The Scarlet Letter
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound? This saying brings me to my thesis of "Guilt Without Confession leads to Great Consequences in The Scarlet Letter".
If a character does something wrong but no one knows, that character can both gain and lose from what they have done. This happens multiple times in The Scaret Letter. Characters commit evil deeds, some are caught, some are not. For those that aren't caught, they have a decision to make. To turn themselves in or to live their lives as if it never happened. For those that choose to live on as if it never happened they are faced with a tough road ahead. They have to deal with the guilt of what they've done. All the while, they must watch to see if anyone is on to them or suspects them of the crime they have commited. However they are rewarded. They get to live on as a regular member of society rather than be imprisoned or even worse, put to death. These are examples of characters who have commited crimes without confessing.
Arthur Dimmesdale is a minister, a father, a sinner and a man who feels incredible guilt. He commits adultery with Hester before the book begins. As the book begins it is revealed he is the true father of Hester's child Pearl. Dimmesdale, afraid of losing his status and being humiliated , does not confess his crime. For this this he is rewarded and greatly punished. He is rewarded by keeping his status in the community. He continues to preach to his flock, for which he gains great acclaim. He is able to see Hester and Pearl whenever he wants. He is also free to leave anytime he wants. He has his freedom and his reputation. However, he also has something he doesn't want, his conscience. How unfortunate it is a person can get away from being caught for a crime. A crime that is punishable by death. Yet, he can't enjoy it. Most people would leave town, sorry for that they've done, but ecstatic they got away to start a new life. Not Dimmesdale, not Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. He beats himself up over it. Usually thats an analogy, but not this time.
The town is all out to witness the punishment of Hester Prynne some of the women are suggesting other punishments and the women are telling us about Hester and Dimmesdale. People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation." (Page 49) Reverend Dimmesdale is seen as a godly man. A man who does not commit sin and in his own mind at this point he feels fine and does not have any guilt. Dimmesdale at this point in the novel is seen as godly and throughout the novel is seen as godly even at the end after the last scaffold scene. Consequently enough, Dimmesdale is trying to convince Hester to reveal the man who has sinned along with her , so the man can be relieved of his guilt, some what ironic because he is the man who has sinned along side with her. "What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him--who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself--the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!" (Page 65) This is the first scaffold scene Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is not showing any signs of guilt at this point, he is still fairly the same and has not began to inflict punishment on himself or so it appears. Dimmesdale in the first scaffold scene seems fairly normal and has not begun to transform himself but by the next time we see him at the scaffold he is taken a turn for the worst.
Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne attempted to expose the varying ways in which different people deal with lingering guilt from sins they have perpetrated. The contrasting characters of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale ideally exemplified the differences in thought and behavior people have for guilt. Although they were both guilty of committing the same crime, these two individuals differed in that one punished themselves with physical and mental torture and the other chose to continue on with their life, devoting it to those less fortunate than they.
Arthur Dimmesdale is a young Reverend who fell in love with Hester Prynne and is the father to Pearl. Hester refuses to name Pearl's father as the Reverend in order to protect his honor but this guilt eats away at the Reverend and cause him to constantly punish himself for the sin he has committed, he starves and whips himself and stays up praying for hours. This psychological and physical torture he puts himself through causes him to develop a heart condition. The Reverend's biggest obstacle he must overcome is himself; the Reverend lives a very difficult life because he is supposedly a man of god yet he has committed a deadly sin. In order to alleviate his guilt the Reverend writes wonderful sermons, which he delivers, to his followers. The
The reverend’s burden of secret sin ultimately led to his demise, while proving his pompous concern for life after death. Dimmesdale’s life was terminated prematurely due to the anchor of sin he bore day in and day out. The minister’s lover, Hester, “made the best possible recovery,” but was still condemned to “spend her life in retribution” (Jones). Notwithstanding Hester’s actions, Arthur’s “burden of carrying the secret sin literally killed him” (Jones). For seven long years, the ordinate saw the reprimands which Hester endured, such as public shame and forced isolation. Rather than join her in humiliation, Arthur chose to contain the depravity within his heart in fear of retribution. Had the minister confessed his immoralities, he would have paid earthly punishment, but would have endured for not bearing the corruptive evil on a daily basis. Dimmesdale understood his action’s outcomes because he would rather die with a holy legacy than go down in infamy for being an adulterer. When Arthur finally acknowledged his debauchery, his motives for doing so were still fainthearted. Reverend Dimmesdale’s redemption came from his own self-interest with little regards for Hester and Pearl. When the minister presented himself to the colony on the scaffold, he acknowledged his “death of triumphant ignominy before the people,” just before passing (Hawthorne 210). Regardless of Arthur’s depravity, he
At certain times it might feel right for some people to help the people that they love by lying. Elizabeth, Proctor's wife, does not tell the truth about her husband's affair in front of the society to protect her husband. She describes her husband as a “good and righteous man” in the court (Miller 113). However, that is not the truth. When a person loves someone, he or she would do anything to help that person. Some people choose the right way, while the others choose the wrong path. Elizabeth decides to lie for the first time just to save Proctor from the problems that he might face if the truth is revealed. Similarly, a teenage girl lies about her friend’s abortion to protect her. De Paulo says, “People tell these serious lies to protect something when the truth could threaten something that they really value” (Kelleher 1). In this case, the girl took the same step to save her friend. People do not want to see their loved ones suffer. As a result, they hide the truth to protect that person from danger. To protect others, they forget the bad outcomes and the trouble they might have to face for telling lies. Not only do people lie for others, but they lie for their own
Arthur Dimmesdale presented himself as an uncorrupted man by his social status. Inside he felt unworthy and corrupt form the sin he has committed. The town’s people looked up to Dimmesdale as a man who could commit no grand sin. “People say that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very seriously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation.” (48). Little did they know that the scandal that Dimmesdale took to hear was the fornication that happened between Dimmesdale and adulteress Hester Prynne. His sinful ways was affecting his health greatly. “Some declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it was cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet.” (106). The town’s people respected him so much so that they figured it was the world that is corrupt and not Dimmesdale.
In choosing to contain his deep sin as a secret, Mr. Dimmesdale suffered from a festering guilt that plagued him until his death. After Hester was sentenced with the punishment for her act of adultery, Mr. Dimmesdale remained silent in refusal to confess to his inclusion in the sin. Over time, feelings of remorse gnawed at Mr. Dimmesdale’s conscience and left him in a self loathing state for his own hypocrisy. Dimmesdale felt excessive guilt in allowing Hester to undergo the entirety of the ridicule and punishment alone while he maintained a positioned of respected and idolized authority, yet could not find it in his heart to expose the sin. Looking upon his situation with the Puritan perspective, Mr. Dimmesdale “…loved the truth and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore above all things else, he loathed his miserable self” (136). Mr. Dimmesdale felt he was living a lie for he, the very man who preached to the community about living a pure life, was living one tainted with...
there would be no flow of water into or out of the cell so the cell
Nathaniel Hawthorne created themes in The Scarlet Letter just as significant as the obvious ideas pertaining to sin and Puritan society. Roger Chillingworth is a character through which one of these themes resonates, and a character that is often underplayed in analysis. His weakness and path of destruction of himself and others are summed up in one of Chillingworth's last sentences in the novel, to Arthur Dimmesdale: "Hadst thou sought the whole earth over... there were no place so secret, no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me, save on this very scaffold!" (171).
When a secret is hidden inside it can engulf and even destroy a person. Arthur Dimmesdale, a revered young minister in the town, demonstrates what happens to the soul. Dimmesdale, as it is later made known, commits the serious crime of adultery with a young married woman named Hester Prynne living in the Plymouth Colony. Hester is unwilling to reveal her partner in sin. Dimmesdale’s fear of persecution and humiliation forces him to keep his sin a secret. So he watches as Hester is placed before her peers on a platform in front of the whole town and is then called to speak to her and urge that she reveal her fellow adulterer. In essence, he is called upon to commit yet another sin, that of hypocrisy. Dimmesdale’s accumulated sins build inside of him, constantly afflicting his soul until it begins to affect him physically. Thinking himself a hypocrite, he tries to ease his conscience and requite his sin by scourging himself on the chest during the night, fasting for days on end and even climbing the same platform on which Hester began her humiliation.
John Proctor is, at first, willing to offer up a false confession that his life may be spared. Inevitably, John Proctor possesses that fateful attribute known to fall fatal to many human beings - pride. While he has, indeed, been ashamed of his many sins throughout his life, Proctor's soul still clings to his pride and his good name, however soiled it may have become. On the morning scheduled for his execution, Proctor wrestles with the realization that one more sin so heaped upon the rest in his life will make precious little difference in the end; "I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint. It is a fraud. I am not that man.... My honesty is broke... I am no good man. Nothing's spoiled by giving them this lie." (126) He attempts to calm his pride by telling himself that the other accused witches who will not give false testimony to save themselves from the gallows have every right to do so; they led lives free of blame. He, however, he tells himself, did no such thing; what right has he to hang among the righteous? "Let them that never lied die now to keep their souls. It is pretense for me, a vanity that will nor blind God nor keep my children out of the wind." (126) Thus the conviction first reached by John Proctor is to save his life rather than to throw it away in mock martyrdom.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mr. Dimmesdale’s greatest fear is that the townspeople will find out about his sin of adultery with Hester Prynne. Mr. Dimmesdale fears that his soul could not take the shame of such a disclosure, as he is an important moral figure in society. However, in not confessing his sin to the public, he suffers through the guilt of his sin, a pain which is exacerbated by the tortures of Roger Chillingworth. Though he consistently chooses guilt over shame, Mr. Dimmesdale goes through a much more painful experience than Hester, who endured the public shame of the scarlet letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s guilt is much more damaging to his soul than any shame that he might have endured.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's works are notable for their treatment of guilt and the complexities of moral choices. "Moral and religious concerns, in short, are almost always present in Hawthorne's work"(Foster, 56). Given Hawthorne's background, it is not a stretch of the imagination to say that his novels are critiques of Puritanism. Hawthorne lived in the deeply scarred New England area, separated from Puritanism by only one generation. His grandfather had been one of the judges in the Salem Witch Trials. Personal issues include the various ways Hawthorne's family and specific events in his life influenced his writing. Readers can easily recognize how "Young Goodman Brown" incorporates facts about his Puritan ancestors. Father Hooper in "The Minister's Black Veil" may be symbolically paralleled to Hawthorne's ancestors, trying to hide a sin they have committed. His descendants' remarks on him in The Custom House introduction to The Scarlet Letter mix pride in Hawthorne's prominence and a sense of inherited guilt for his deeds as judge. Hawthorne's guilt of wrongs committed by his ancestors was paramount in the development of his literary career. He investigates human weaknesses through the time period of his ancestors. Generally Hawthorne's writings contained powerful symbolic and psychological effects of pride, guilt, sin and punishment.
Due to the availability of news and media in today’s technologically advanced society, many people are aware of the violent acts that are committed every day all throughout the world. In addition, the technological advances of today’s society have continued to fuel one of the most successful industries of the present day: the video game industry. Many people have been eager to blame the video game industry for the violent acts that are committed throughout the world because the video game industry has continued to target an audience that seemingly craves an increasing amount of violence, and they criticize the video game industry for its complete lack of restrictions on the sale of violent video games to teenagers. However, although some experts believe that playing violent video games may perpetuate a violent disposition in a teenager, it has been demonstrated that
The Reverend Dimmesdale was another character that demonstrated the effects of sin. He committed the same offense that Hester committed, adultery. The difference between Dimmesdale and Hester was that Dimmesdale was not publicly punished for his crime while Hester was. Because of this, Dimmesdale felt extremely guilty. This feeling of guilt was so atrocious that it mentally and physically withered Dimmesdale, as he felt a very strong need to repent and cleanse his soul.