Essay On Hester Prynne

Hester Prynne’s Struggle With Her Inner Demons

After breaking an important colonial law, Hester Prynne is sentenced to forever wear a scarlet “A” upon her chest for committing adultery, a sin. From the moment Hester places the “A” upon her chest, her whole world, literally and figuratively, changes. Now a public symbol of what happens to those whose sin, the people of the colony now view her in a whole new light leaving Hester to deal with the stress of public humiliation. With the pressure of living up to public standards and being a good mother to her daughter, Pearl, Hester comes to find herself struggling with her inner demons. From the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne must learn to deal with the demons living

With words such as “doubtless,” “secret,” “unrecognized,” “retribution,” and “torture,” the feeling of the passage can easily be determined. Whether or not it was known there were demons inside of Hester Prynne’s head, it can be determined by the reader that whatever was going on was not positive. These words also add to the emotions that Hester is feeling with her public humiliation. They create an air of uncertainty and countless pits of doubt and the unknown as the words come one right after the other, each in a new thought, each one bringing more and more doubts into the mind of Hester

Part of the way Hester plans to make up for her sin would be to “purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.” This final statement to describe Hester follows a normal psychological sequence. At the beginning of the paragraph, the reader can clearly see the doubts and the fears Hester has revolving around what will happen to her now that she is being punished for her sins, similar to that of any ordinary person. As her mental process continues and Hawthorne uses different methods to inform the reader of those thoughts, he closes with a statement of irony. Hester Prynne has committed a sin of which is highly punishable by even death and was instead given a punishment to forever live in public shame. After she finally begins to wrap her mind around the changes made to her life, she begins to think of ways to solve the problem. In her mind, she believes she will be able to purge herself of any other bad deeds and sins she has committed and will be able to become “saint-like” and a martyr. The irony in this is that Hester believes she will be able to save her name and reputation by ridding herself of the blackness on her name from previous scandalous acts and gain the recognition of one who dies in honor of their beliefs. If Hester had honored her beliefs