Essay On Hypocrisy In The Scarlet Letter

As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor states, “There are no bystanders in life [...] Our humanity makes us each a part of something greater than ourselves.” Sotomayor, along with countless others, believe that humans, as a species, are all connected through their actions and human nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne shows in his novel The Scarlet Letter that humans are all connected, not only through our humanity but also through our acts of sin. As it is part of humanity to be sinful, Hawthorne argues that sin itself connects everyone down to their very personalities and actions. Within his novel Hawthorne argues that sin permeates all aspects of society.

Hawthorne argues that hypocrisy is revealed through people’s reactions to sin. Hawthorne uses

Early in the novel, Dimmesdale exclaims, goes on how “What can thy silence do for him, except to tempt him---yea, compel him, as it were---to add hypocrisy to sin?” in regardsing to his own sin (63). He knows what will happen to him if he endures his sin in private, but he is too weak at this point in the book to admit it. Dimmesdale knows how the parishioners will interpret these confessions: he is not blind to their looks of adoration. Dimmesdale enjoys being viewed as a saint, even though he knows he is a truly a sinner. The years of torture the minister receives are brought about by his own doing. If his supposed commitment to the community had stopped him from admitting his sin, he would have not been tortured. When Hester and Pearl stand with him during one of his nightly vigils on the scaffold, Pearl asks “Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?”(139), to which Dimmesdale replies that he will not on account of his fear of being publicly exposed. Now Not only does the reader not onlynow understands that Dimmesdale is’s a coward, but he’s also a hypocritehipocrite as he refuses to admit to his sin when he knows that’s the only way he can fully get rid of

Hawthorne recognizes how structured the Puritan society andis discusses how one’s sins and actions can affect their standing in society. The main element of the novel, Hester’s scarlet letter, greatly attests to how sin alone can change your entire societal position. After receiving her letter, Hester “quote about living outside town” and is ostracized by the small community. Even the children begin to put Hester down, chanting awful things such as “let us fling mud at her”. TNothing about Hester has changed, she still works as a seamstress, the sole reason she moves to the bottom rung of the social ladder is due to her sins in a very religious society. On the opposite side of the spectrum lies Dimmesdale. As the local minister, Dimmesdale wields a lot of power in the town, but he is placed upon a pedestal as a prominent figure because the townspeople believe he is so pure. Even when Dimmesdale confesses that he has sinned, the townspeople only revere him more and believe that they are the ones who have sinned and are unholy. By the end of the book, Dimmesdale has inadvertently gathered enough support because people revere him that many doubted if heDimmesdale had sinned at all or “insert examples of how people think he died”. In a society dominated by religion, ministers, by their very nature, are