In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne focuses on the effects sin has on someone’s life. He compares the effects of secret sin and sin that is out in the open. He also makes note of the physical effects and the emotional effects that comes with sin. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth each have sins that they must deal with. Hester committed adultery while her husband was away. When the townspeople find out by seeing her pregnant, she is put on a scaffold in front of the town for all to see her and her sin. She also receives a red “A” that she must wear for the rest of her life. Arthur Dimmsdale, the man Hester cheated with, also does not reveal his sin to the community even though he is the minister of the church and is looked up to by the people. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, seeks obsessive wrath and revenge towards Dimmesdale and commits his entire life to ruining Dimmesdale’s life. Hawthorne shows through Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth that sin must be confessed for anyone to have the peace that is found in redemption.
Hester Prynne does not have a choice in how to deal with her sin. The townspeople put her on the scaffold to make an example out of her, but they did not make Hester confess. When she came out of the prison she looked beautiful and brave sporting the A that would become a part of her. She did not try to hide her letter or make the letter small, rather she embraced her sin and made it beautiful. Hawthorne illustrates the impact the letter had on the townspeople by saying, “Both men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time- was that Scarlet Letter, so fa...
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...lp Dimmesdale by moving in with him. Chillingworth’s goal is to get into Dimmesdale’s mind and under his skin. Chillingworth grows uglier and more grotesque as the novel goes on because his outward appearance is reflecting in on his inner hatred, wrath, and jealousy towards Dimmesdale.
Nathaniel Hawthorne believes that the only way to have inner peace is through the confession of one’s sins and the ability to move on from the past. Hester has been made beautiful because she has made the decision to let go of her past. Dimmesdale, however; refuses to admit until the very end of his life when he had nothing left to lose, making his confession less genuine and sincere. This made him weak and emaciated outwardly and inwardly. Chillingworth never forgave Dimmesdale and that made him seek revenge and wrath instead of the peace that comes through confession.
The fact that revenge destroys both the victim and the seeker is another theme presented in the Scarlet Letter. Dimmesdale is the victim of Chillingworth’s revenge upon Hester and whoever her lover happened to be. Dimmesdale, beside his self-inflicted harm was also not helped by the fact Chillingworth enjoyed watching him waste away. However, Chillingworth is also subject to this destiny as evidence by his change in the novel. Chillingworth was considered wise and aged in the beginning of the novel, although, later he is seen as being dusky and evil.
The Scarlet Letter starts off by throwing Hester Prynne into drama after being convicted for adultery in a Puritan area. Traveling from Europe to America causes complications in her travel which also then separates her from her husband, Roger Chillingworth for about three years. Due to the separation, Hester has an affair with an unknown lover resulting in having a child. Ironically, her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, is a Reverend belonging to their church who also is part of the superiors punishing the adulterer. No matter how many punishments are administered to Hester, her reactions are not changed. Through various punishments, Hester Prynne embraces her sin by embroidering a scarlet letter “A” onto her breast. However, she is also traumatized deep within from everything she’s been through. Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts this story of sin by using rhetorical devices such as allusion, alliteration and symbolism.
In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne portrays a society filled with betrayel, secrecie, and sinners. The people of society do not show their true colors and hide their true intentions. Dimmsdale, Chillingsworth and Hester all have fallen to sin, however they all believe they are not the worse sinner and try to seek justice for themselves.
Normally when most people think of vampires, they envision a deathly, pale creature with fangs. But Thomas Foster seems to think differently, who argues that it is not necessary for a vampire to embody a stereotypical vampire. Surprisingly enough, even humans can be these types of monsters. From Foster 's perspective, being a vampire not only includes an individual 's aesthetics, but also their actions, personality, intent, and overall representation of personal identity. The classic novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, presents an excellent example of this occurrence, where the character Roger Chillingworth meets the criteria of a vampiric figure, based on Thomas Foster 's ideas of vampirism, found in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
It haunts the characters and makes them change whether it be for the worse or for the better. Hester changes for the better. She becomes more strong willed and is willing to accept her sin while Dimmesdale hides his sin and ends up suffering for it. Sachin Vaman Londhe, an Assistant Professor in English, concluded exquisitely the effects on sinning, “It causes pain and suffering and isolates the transgressor. It leads to the deterioration of both mental and physical health. It can also be said that hidden sin and guilt causes more suffering than open guilt” (Londhe 4). This sums up Dimmesdale, he suffered slowly for hiding his guilt and he deteriorated. He left Hester to suffer alone and he was the one to ultimately pay the price. It is stated in The Scarlet Letter “In the view of infinite purity, we are all sinners alike” (Hawthorne 245). Dimmesdale is saying that everyone is a sinner and they are all alike. They spent most of their time blaming Hester when they were sinning as
Hester Prynne. The face of beauty, sin, and inner-strength. She wears an “A” upon her bosom and embraces another symbol of her sin in her arms. Hester Prynne made one mistake that got the townspeople ranting. The townspeople make rude comments about Hester and the beautifully embroidered “A”. She stood upon a scaffold, Pearl in hand, and allows her peers to judge her. She didn’t react to any of the mean comments or glares. Her husband and lover keep their identities concealed from society while she takes the blame for the crime. In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, he illustrates to readers how strong Hester 's character is, revealed through her public humiliation, and her lover’s actions towards her.
Guilt is powerful thing. A person’s whole life can be destroyed seconds after being exposed to the strength of guilt. Even though admitting a sin can seem more difficult than not, that confession can often make a world of difference in the long run. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne, and Reverend Dimmesdale, have two very different ways of dealing with guilt. These differences in action are what change the courses of their lives. The actions taken by one character are successful, though the actions of the other put his life in ruins. Hester confesses her sin in public, while Dimmesdale does not. This simple choice made causes a drastic change in each of their lives. When comparing the lives of Hester and Dimmesdale,
... a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment!" For the first time Chillingworth is able to see himself for the devil he is truly becoming; nevertheless, he continues with his fiendish torture. Over seven years, Chillingworth changes greatly.
Despite the tragic ending of Dimmesdale’s life, Hawthorne demonstrates his perspectives on repentance, that doing so yields a free and strong-minded character. Because Dimmesdale neglected to make amends for his sins, he deteriorated on the inside and outside. In his attempts to atone, he still did not truly achieve penitence in the right way and continued to become unstable and weak. Before Dimmesdale’s last breath, he finally repented in front of his society, liberating himself from the evils of Chillingworth and his own self destruction. Upon that scaffold in his last moment, Dimmesdale did the most difficult task he had ever done, incriminate himself with Hester Prynne, the public symbol of ignominy in the Puritan community.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross once said, “Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.” This quote truly captures Dimmesdale’s death and journey to death, it is guilt that drives him to the grave and it accompanies him throughout all five grieving stages. Dimmesdale is one of many characters in The Scarlet Letter that is faced with problems both personally and spiritually. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a romantic novel about a young woman, Hester Prynne, who is permanently marked with her sin by a scarlet A she must bare on her chest and also by her daughter Pearl. Hester committed adultery with the young minister of Boston, Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester, and her beloved child Pearl, learn to over come the A and change the meaning of it from adulterer to able, while they are changing the way society views them, Dimmesdale is withering away under the “care” of Rodger Chillingworth, Hester’s past husband. Chillingworth knows about the sin and seeks revenge on Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale is helpless and in a downward spiral. He let the sin become who he is, even though the towns people don’t know of his adultery until his dying breath. The Scarlet Letter is a story about overcoming the darkness that hangs above you and stepping out of the sin or gloom that controls you. For characters like Hester this is a fairly easy thing to handle, but on the flip side characters like Dimmesdale struggle and can not seem to escape their heinous acts and don’t find peace of mind until they die. The Scarlet Letter mainly focuses on the process of overcoming these troubling times and how each individual character handles the pressure, stress, and guilt that come along with it differently. Arthur Dimmesdale is a lost soul after his sin, he expe...
The theme Hawthorne builds up in Chillingworth is not simply his pain and torment. It is a more important representation of the weakness in the values of the people in Puritan times, and how their perseverance for "justice" skewed their views on life and forgiveness. Because of his mindset, Chillingworth torments himself with his goal to destroy Dimmesdale just as much as Dimmesdale tortures himself for their seven years together. Chillingworth is ruining his own life and does not realize it, because he no longer sees the value in life as he tries to ruin one.
“A bloody scourge…rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance.” (Hawthorne, 141) In the Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Minister Dimmesdale starved himself, whipped himself, and tortured himself to get rid of the guilt caused by his sin with Hester Prynne. Hawthorne describes the minister’s guilt as the evil that anchored him down and shows how Dimmesdale tortures himself but can never get rid of it. His guilt came from many things. First was his guilt for committing the crime with Hester Prynne. Second is his guilt for not being with her at the time that she was put upon the scaffold. Last was his guilt from not revealing himself to his own daughter and from having to stay out of her life due to fear of being shamed by the community. Hawthorne’s views on guilt and Dimmesdale are mostly that his guilt controlled his life completely until the very end when the power of the sin and guilt took over to the point where he couldn’t control himself.
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.
Through these events, Hester Prynne’s image is transformed throughout the course of the story. As Hester wears the scarlet letter, the reader can feel how much of an outcast Hester becomes. When walking through town, “.she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they were resolute to accept her, she laid her finger on the scarlet letter and passed on” (Hawthorne, 127). She believes that she is not worthy of the towns acknowledgments and chooses to ignore them.
The Scarlet Letter is a blend of realism, symbolism, and allegory. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses historical settings for this fictional novel and even gives historical background information for the inspiration of the story of Hester Prynne in the introduction of The Scarlet Letter, ‘The Custom-House’. The psychological exploration of the characters and the author’s use of realistic dialogue only add to the realism of the novel. The most obvious symbol of the novel is the actual scarlet letter ‘A’ that Hester wears on her chest every day, but Hawthorne also uses Hester’s daughter Pearl and their surroundings as symbols as well. Allegory is present as well in The Scarlet Letter and is created through the character types of several characters in the novel.