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Analysis of the novel called the scarlet letter
Analysis of the novel called the scarlet letter
Theme of sin and punishment in the Scarlet Letter
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The Scarlet Letter
It is six in the morning at an Arizona prison. A prisoner named Jonas has been awoken by the prison bell, which sounds more like a horn, and signals that it is time for the prisoners to awake. Jonas quickly gets up, makes his bed and then stands at the door of his cell awaiting a prison guard who will be doing the daily check of his cell. While waiting for the guard, Jonas thinks to himself about what his day will be like, but he soon realizes that it will be the same as the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on. Jonas then grows quickly depressed, for he realizes, as he always does, that his life is filled with repetition and he is trapped by it. Like Jonas, many characters in the novel, The Scarlet Letter, experience the feeling of being caught in one way or another . Among those characters are Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl Prynne and Hester Prynne. These characters are truly affected by entrapment.
From beginning to end, many factors contribute to making Mr. Dimmesdale feel trapped in one way or another. To start, he is trapped in silence and pain. His need to be silent and the pain that he feels because of it, is shown when he says to Hester Prynne, in front of the town,
Hester Prynne, ... I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him , except it tempt him-yea, compel him, as it were-to add hyprocisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him-who perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself - the bitter, wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips! (Hawthorne, 62).
The town does not know it yet, but Mr. Dimmesdale is Hester Prynne’s fellow sinner.
A sinful nature is an aspect in man that makes him rebellious against God. Everyone has a sinful nature and it affects every part of us. Sin corrupts the human mind and has consequences for doing wrong in the eyes of the Lord. Every individual on Earth sins, and this is represented in the novel The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale to portray how different people cope with their sin and the consequences of that sin.
Dimmesdale tells Hester “What can thy silence do for him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin?” (Hawthorne 63). Dimmesdale pushes Hester to reveal her lover (Himself) because he is too weak to do it himself. He “loves” Hester, but doesn’t have the guts to share her burden with her. He understands the turmoil of keeping his secret, but is too attached to his position as minister to admit it. Dimmesdale’s description of his “confessions” in chapter 11 also serve to further exemplify his hypocritical character. He continually calls himself “vile” and a sinner, but he knows that he will only receive more adoration from the crowd. Instead of outright saying that he committed adultery with Hester, he knowingly feeds the audience, boosting his popularity. Again at the scaffold scene his hypocrisy is obvious. He cowers both when he sees a man and when Pearl asks him “wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?” (Hawthorne 139). His inability to release in any form his transgression shows whilst playing the preacher role shows is cowardice and
4. The Scarlet Letter was written and published in 1850. The novel was a product of the Transcendentalist and Romantic period.
Hester and Dimmesdale repent and seek forgiveness for their sins. They use their experience to make ...
It becomes known to the reader that Dimmesdale is ill and that is due to fact that he is guilty of being Hester’s lover and Pearl’s father. Hawthorne reveals Dimmesdale’s bad nature after the revealing of his own sins. For example, Hawthorne wrote, “Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain.” Dimmesdale’s guilt is manifesting into physical pain, but he won’t end his pain by revealing his sins, he will only let it fester within him even more until it completely destroys him. Hawthorne shows this manifestation in Dimmesdale when he writes: “His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given
The source of Dimmesdale's sudden shame is Hester coming up with ideas for them to flee from the town and leave
Dimmesdale has not the strength of Hester, or her honesty, so he cannot stand alone to confess. He is a good minister and his effectiveness betrays his desire to confess. Sin and agony have enabled Dimmesdale to recognize and empathize with other sinners, but still his congregation loves him, and this tortures him even more! Dimmesdale struggles with his knowledge of his sin, his inability to disclose it to Puritan society, and his desire for penance. In an attempt to seek salvation he fasts until he faints and whips himself until he bleeds. These punishments are done in private and do not provide the cleansing Dimmesdale seeks and needs.
Necessity in keeping Dimmesdale’s part in Hester’s life sequestered arose not only to develop feelings the plot in such a way that it engulfed multiple characters, but also because of his position in the church in the book and timing.
Dimmesdale led people to believe that he was disheartened by the crime in his congregation. Her punishment, an embroidered scarlet letter, was far better than the townspeople wished upon her (death) but Dimmesdale’s punishment was far worse. Dimmesdale had kept his secret to himself for more than seven years, and it began to affect his mental health. He whipped himself and fasted because the guilt of not telling his secret got to him. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, moved in with Dimmesdale and started to torture him. Chillingworth finds something (most likely a branded “A”) on Dimmesdale’s chest while he was sleeping, which shocks him. Dimmesdale has an internal conflict on whether or not he should give up his secret. In Chapter 10, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth discuss how they feel about sin. Dimmesdale says that “The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed (Hawthorne, 121).” If Dimmesdale had owned up to his secret, he never would have gone through all of the shame and sorrow that he now faces, he would have a relationship with Hester and Pearl, and he would not have to worry about people finding out his secret Dimmesdale was suffering internally where Hester is suffering externally through public
Dimmesdale, a lot of times, let his theory of not being accepted, from his life as a role- model type, religious man, take away from what he knew he was called forth to do. By these actions, he shows a yearn to be accepted even if it could effect his churchly values. Dimmesdale struggles greatly with his inner-self and moral sense. This shows that instead of having pure heart, he has a need to conform to the ways of the society around him. Dimmesdale carries his sin so heavily that he isolates himself from society. He experiences paranoia around anyone because he doesn't want anyone to know, and is too afraid to repent. "Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared” (Hawthorne 128). This shows how closed off to the outside world Dimmesdale is and wants to be. Dimmesdale wants to keep away from society because he has seen what Hester has gone through, and he thinks if he comes around, people will call him out for his adultery. Dimmesdale was concealing himself so much because he couldn't bring himself to repent of his sin. Because he didn't have the capability to confess to the people and deal with his punishment, he began to shatter inside as a man. "Beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so feeble while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity," (pg. 139). The whole time Dimmesdale was keeping his sin to himself, he became very
She is open to the town and the people in it, which allows for her soul to be free and purified of all guilt even though she must bear the mental burden of wearing the letter, her conscience can be clean. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, ultimately dies from the spiritual hardship placed on his soul by his inability to repent and publically admit to his crime. He is able to resume his false identity as a righteous minister after Hester’s condiment, but he truly longs for her to expose him because he is aware that he does not have the will to reveal himself to so many who look to him for guidance and counsel in his positon of power. He looks to Hester and cryptically begs and pleads to her to uncover his true identity as her secret lover but she will not out of her love for him. Hester feels a deep spiritual connection to Dimmesdale, one that she has never experienced before and feels that the mutual offense between them binds them together and binds her to the
One of the main themes in The Scarlet Letter is that of the secret. The plot of the book is centered on Hester Prynne’s secret sin of adultery. Nathaniel Hawthorne draws striking parallelism between secrets held and the physical and mental states of those who hold them. The Scarlet Letter demonstrates that a secret or feeling kept within slowly engulfs and destroys the soul such as Dimmesdale’s sin of hypocrisy and Chillingworth’s sin of vengeance, while a secret made public, such as Prynne’s adultery, can allow a soul to recover and even strengthen.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is one of the most respected and admired novels of all time. Often criticized for lacking substance and using more elaborate camera work, freely adapted films usually do not follow the original plot line. Following this cliché, Roland Joffe’s version of The Scarlet Letter received an overwhelmingly negative reception. Unrealistic plots and actions are added to the films for added drama; for example, Hester is about to be killed up on the scaffold, when Algonquin members arrive and rescue her. After close analysis, it becomes evident of the amount of work that is put into each, but one must ask, why has the director adapted their own style of depicting the story? How has the story of Hester Prynne been modified? Regarding works, major differences and similarities between the characterization, visual imagery, symbolism, narration and plot, shows how free adaptation is the correct term used.
Dimmesdale can not talk to others because only one person, Hester, knows about his guilt. She is the only person he can talk to, so he feels alone and detached from his community. In Chapter 17 Dimmesdale says, “ [they] look inward and discern the black reality of what they idolize?” Dimmesdale asks Hester this because he sees that no one else truly knows who he is, because his guilt holds him back from interacting from others.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, there are many moral and social themes develped throughout the novel. Each theme is very important to the overall effect of the novel. In essence, The Scarlet Letter is a story of sin, punishment and the importance of truth. One theme which plays a big role in The Scarlet Letter is that of sin and its effects. Throughout the novel there were many sins committed by various characters. The effects of these sins are different in each character and every character was punished in a unique way. Two characters were perfect examples of this theme in the novel. Hester Prynne and The Reverend Dimmesdale best demonstrated the theme of the effects of sin.