Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter

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On the Pillory
Everyone has secret sins that we don’t want anyone else to find out about. Yet, when these secret sins are revealed, we discover that these sins were holding us back. Hester Pyrnne returns to her home in the last chapter of The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and willingly puts the scarlet letter back on. This letter bears the pain and guilt of her secret sin, adultery, and the town that she lived in thought that the letter would make her deal with, and be redeemed from her sin. Through her trails, we can learn about ourselves, and how to deal with the secret sins inside each of us. Hester Prynne saw the Reverend Dimmesdale’s embrace of his sin on the pillory led to his salvation. Even though she preached that she was unable to be saved, she was drawn back to the place of her sin so as to let the scarlet letter do its job and save her. Secret sin is something that we want to hide, but only after we deal with it in the place that it occurred, can we move on.
Dimmesdale’s confession of his secret sin and embracing it led to his salvation. Reverend Dimmesdale knew that he was at the end of his life and wanted to do God’s will to save himself. What he had to do would be the hardest thing that he had ever done, but he knew that telling the town about his adultery was what he had to do. He came to the pillory, so as to let the town know of his secret sin, and to “make haste to take [his] shame upon [himself],” so as to be redeemed by God (218). Dimmesdale knew that the path he had been taking to redemption was leading him astray. The only he could do to escape the devil, as Chillingworth pointed out when he said, “there was no place…where thou couldst escaped me-save on this very scaffold,” was to own up to his s...

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... she was worthy of redemption, but after seeing a fellow sinner receive redemption, she saw that God is indeed merciful. Hester wrestled with her sin, and to finally conquer her sin, she came back to the place that it had occurred. Hester wanted the peace and grace of forgiveness, and with the help of the scarlet letter, began dealing with her sin. Secret sin plays a key role in our lives, and although most of us don’t have physical symbols of this secret sin, it is embedded in our soul. Secret sin tears apart the human soul and psyche, and only after it is dealt with, can we move on to find peace or happiness. We need to make sure that the things that we do wrong, we don’t hide. We have to deal with these sins, and turn them into stepping stones, so as to grow and become a better person. Hiding them leads to destruction, but growing from our faults has no limits.

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