Free College Essays - Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter - Only God Should Judge

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The Scarlet Letter: Only God Should Judge

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel The Scarlet Letter many moral issues come to mind. For one, the book is about an adulteress trying to live her life in an old Puritan town. This is especially hard since the man who has committed this sin with her, known as Arthur Dimmesdale, refuses to confess his part in her crime. The town has many convictions of whom or what Hester is which makes it impossible for Hester to live a happy normal life.

The thoughts on adultery were not very good at the time of the puritans. Many people were banished from society or even killed as a result of it. Hester’s punishment is relatively light because of her age and beauty. She is forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her breast for the rest of her life so that all can see her shame. But for Hester, Death would have been a much more welcomed punishment. As a result of her action and punishment she ends up a sad and shameful old woman that is never released from her shame. Seeing her bravery, Dimmesdale confesses to having committed adultery also and then dies of faintness of heart. Hester dies years later and not even in death is she released for on her grave only a dark gloom surrounds, never any light.

The Scarlet Letter is a book that involves the perception of adultery, thoughts about it, and the result from it. To begin, the perceptions on Hester as shown throughout the novel are not at all good ones. Some people think she is a witch, this is shown when a true witch asked her if she will be joining them later that night in the forest for a witches gathering: “Hist, Hist Wilt thou go with us to-night?...”(pg.80). Other people think that Hester is somehow involved with Satan by directly relating the scarlet letter with evil or supernatural: “ the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the passageway of the interior.”(pg.48) The women of the town also highly frown upon her action and when she is standing atop the scaffold they mock her by saying such things as “…before this brazen hussy…”(pg.26) The town believes what she did is wrong and immoral, which it is, but what they don’t realize is that it isn’t because she is a witch or a demon of Satan and certainly not shameless.

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