Forgiveness in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

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Forgiveness in The Scarlet Letter

"Time heals all wounds." is a famous line in American history. I don't think that this is true. My line would be, "Forgiveness heals all wounds." I think that Forgiveness in a very important part of life. Without it, people can not move on with their lives. Let's take for instance a murderer and the family of the person he killed. The murderer may be sentenced to death. The family of the person who was killed could go in and watch the man that killed their family member be put to death. That may give them peace of mind, but they still can not completely move on. They must forgive murderer for killing the person before they can really move on with their lives. Once they do this it will be easier for them. A book that really illustrated this is The Scarlet Letter. In this book there are three main characters, Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne, and Roger Chillingworth. These three people either needed forgiveness or needed to forgive someone. Some got it, some didn't. Whether or not they received or gave forgiveness had a great impact in their lives.

Arthur Dimmesdale was a Reverend. He was supposed to be a great, God fearing person. He was supposed to never break a rule and be the kind of person everyone wanted to be. The only problem was that Dimmesdale had sinned, and it had been a horrible sin. He had slept with a married woman, and she ended up pregnant. This married woman was Hester Prynne. He needed forgiveness from everyone else before he could forgive himself. Dimmesdale couldn't tell anyone what he had done because he could have been put to death for it. He was too afraid of everyone else's reaction to tell them what he person had done. Therefore he could not receive forgiveness. This sin ate away at Dimmesdale till he couldn't live anymore. All this happened because he couldn't receive forgiveness from the people of his community and himself.

Hester Prynne had been sent to Boston with reports of her husband to follow. After about a year she got kind of lonely. She wasn't sure is he even was going to come to her.

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