Light And Darkness In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that” (Martin Luther King Jr.). Martin Luther may not have been writing this about The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, but it clearly connects. Throughout this book sin and purity are depicted by light and darkness. There are many examples of this in The Scarlet Letter. This book shows how the light comes out when there is sin and how the sin hides from the light. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses a contrast of light and darkness to show the good and evil in the characters Pearl, Hester, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth.

Pearl is a symbol of light and purity in The Scarlet Letter. She is just a child who doesn’t know much about

Although unlike Pearl, they represent both light and darkness. They represent both because of the sin that they committed at the beginning of The Scarlet Letter. Yet, they both still have light within them. In the beginning of the book Hawthorne says, “Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as is meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast” (53). This shows that the sun does shine on her but only to reveal the scarlet letter on her chest so people know that she sinned. The light is still shines on hester but not in the way she might like. Pearl knows this because she says, “The sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself because it is afraid of something on your bosom” (126). Pearl realizes her mother’s sin and knows that she has darkness within her and that is why the light doesn’t like her. Dimmesdale has committed the same sin yet the light does not hide from him, this is why their lives are so different. Dimmesdale says this to Hester in the forest, “Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!” (131). Even though they committed the same sin, Dimmesdale’s sin is hidden and Hester’s is not. The people in the village see him as a person of light. Yet, he has a hidden darkness that they do not know about. Later in the book there is

Again just like Dimmesdale, Chillingworth’s darkness is hidden from most people. He uses his whole life to hurt others so there is no light within him. “Now there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight… the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel” (87). This is how Hawthorne describes Chillingworth at the beginning of the book. Everything he did was focused on getting back at Dimmesdale and therefore all that he had inside of him was darkness. “Pearl was pointing her finger towards old Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold” (107). The scaffold is the representation of sin in the village and where Hester was condemned for her sin in the beginning of the book. Chillingworth would always stay away from the scaffold because he knew that he could be up there because of his own sin by trying to ruin Dimmesdale’s life. Also this is where later in the book the sin of Dimmesdale would later be revealed and that is exactly what Chillingworth did not