Analysis Of The Letter Through Today's Eyes

The book, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the scandalous story of Hester Prynne and how the scarlet letter ‘A’ burns on her breast. Hester has a child who is born in adultery. She is sentenced to stand on the dreaded scaffold and endure public shaming and to wear the letter of conviction for the rest of her days. Even in her suffering, Hester refuses to give the identity of the father, the highly regarded Minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. He is a cowardly man who is permits Hester to suffer alone. Even though he confesses his sins eventually, he refuses several other opportunities; therefore, he is weak and cowardly, and in no way a hero.

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set in Boston during the 1640s where the main religion was Puritanism. Hawthorne published his book during the Romantic period emphasizing individualism and a person’s relationship with God. This book also contains Gothic elements because it shows the psychological effects of being alienated from society and the darker sides of humanity. Throughout the book there are characters that demonstrate hubris. The character that most prominently shows excessive pride is Arthur Dimmesdale.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, is set in Puritan times, following the lives of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth after Hester’s crime of adultery. While Hester Prynne successfully processes her emotions and refuses to cave in on herself, the men in the novel resort to revenge. When one devotes themselves to vengeance, they become consumed by it. Reverend Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth both spend the novel taking revenge on themselves and someone else, respectively, leading to their decline of life and character.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" is set in the early days of Puritan America. Hester Prynne, a seamstress, comes to the New World before her husband in order to prepare a place for them. During his absence, she develops a relationship with Arthur Dimmesdale, a rising minister in the newly founded Puritan community. Hester becomes pregnant. The novel is widely viewed to be a story about her trials and tribulations; however, critic Randall Steward argues that, "…Hester is not the protagonist, the chief actor, and the tragedy of the novel is not her tragedy but Arthur's. He is the persecuted one, the tempted one. He it was whom the sorrows of death encompassed…His public confession is one of

The classic novel of The Scarlet Letter is written by Nathaniel Hawthorn. The novel takes place in the middle of the seventeenth century in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was a very strict Puritan society at the time. The story begins as Hester Prynne is led out from the entrance of the town prison carrying her newborn daughter, Pearl. The crowd, who is gathered to witness her public punishment, instantly observes and recognizes the scarlet letter “A” on her breast.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne takes place in Boston, Massachusetts in 1642, during the Puritan Era. The novel displays a character named, about Hester Prynne, who is considered to be an adulterous woman. Roger Chillingworth, her husband, does not know that Hester had committed the sin of adultery with Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester has a baby named Pearl who symbolizes Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin. To summarize this novel is truly about Hester’s journey with the letter “A” and how she overcomes the letter.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a Romantic novel about two adulterers, Hester and Dimmesdale, who are forced to live with the repercussions of their sin. Hester Prynne is punished by wearing a scarlet ‘A’ which ostracizes her from Puritan Boston, leading to several years of solitude. During this time, Roger Chillingworth, her vengeful husband, preys on Dimmesdale, whose only source of repent is in his hypocritical preachings. When Dimmesdale finally speaks to Hester again, they plan to escape their wrongdoings by fleeing back to England, where they can live together as a loving family with their daughter Pearl. Although some may argue that Hester and Dimmesdale are in love, a closer examination of the novel shows that they are

Hawthorne doesn’t reveal any information about Hester before the actual book starts. The author brings these attributes of Hester to our attention. We come to a clearer understanding about Hester being a strong independent woman implied by the persona. Hester being publicly shamed, Hester’s confrontation with Chillingworth, Hester being threatened with Pearl’s separation, and Hester contributing to her society show how the author liked Hester; the events portrayed her in a good light.

Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s literary work in The Scarlet Letter, the townspeople within the 1840s Salem, Massachusetts demonstrated a society fueled of hypocrisy. The primary focus of the story was the consequence upon the main characters and throughout the community caused by adultery, hypocrisy, and revenge. Hester Prynne, the strong female lead, committed adultery while she was married to someone else and therefore wore a red “A” upon her bosom to be publicly shamed. Hester’s partner in adultery, Arthur Dimmesdale, deceiving the whole town by hiding his sin. Also, Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s ex-lover comes to town under a new identity as a doctor, but in the process evolves himself into a compulsive personality.

Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the ideology of Puritan society in the novel the Scarlet Letter; however reader also get to witness his characters being an illustration of hypocrisy and victims to their own guilt. In the Scarlet Letter, as in many of Hawthorne’s shorter works, he makes profuse use of the Puritan past: its odd exclusionary belief, its harsh code of ruling, its concern with sex and witchcraft. The Scarlet Letter is a story that is embellished but yet simple. Many readers may view this novel as a soap opera due to the way Hawthorne conveys this Puritan society’s sense of strictness and inability to express true emotion along with the secrecy and how deceiving the characters are being. As the story unfolds the main character Hester Prynne is bounded in marriage at an early age. She engages in an adulterous affair with an unknown member of their small village. Hester soon becomes pregnant and with her husband’s absence the chances of this child belonging to her husband are slim. The towns’ people know that she has committed a sin and imprisons her for her crime.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter portrays Hester Prynne, a woman who has been stripped of her social standing for committing adultery. By refusing to say who the father is, she is forced to wear an embroidered ‘A’ for the townspeople to view and criticize her for her mistake. Having to deal with conflicts both internally and externally, Hester goes through a journey to make her life better for herself and her daughter. As the years progress, Hester learns that her life is much more valuable than she had first presumed.

The Scarlet Letter, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a didactic tale of one woman who defies the rules of early Puritan society along with the struggles she endured. Hester Prynne, a woman who had an affair with Reverend Dimmesdale and as a result conceives Pearl, was chastised because of the affair and is then made in outcast in society. Hester was seen as a sinner and in result reprimanded for this with imprisonment and then the letter being made an outcast by being forced to stitch a scarlet letter A into her clothing, and forced to live outside of town in the woods completely secluded. As the novel develops Hawthorne explores the sin and hypocrisy of the Puritan lifestyle, and uses symbolism to demonstrate the isolation of Hester and Pearl.

Anne Hutchinson, a Puritan settler, gets exiled from the Puritan Settlement because of her actions. Similarly, Hester Prynne’s sinful action results in her confinement in prison, away from the town people. In the 1850’s, Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter. Set in a Puritanical Society, The Scarlet Letter tells the story of how one simple act of passion upsets the very basic thread of society. In the novel, Hester Prynne personally transcends the judgments of society through her discoveries in nature, while she lives a simplistic life and becomes more self-reliant.

Society has unintentionally been guided by the same themes since the beginning of time. The recurring themes that are present in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic The Scarlet Letter are still relevant in today’s society. When high school students and teachers claim that Hawthorne’s novel is archaic and should be removed from the curriculum, they are absolutely wrong. Hester Prynne, the main character of the novel, commits adultery and as punishment, has to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest for everyone to see. Throughout the novel, Hester is faced with obstacles such as the struggle between self and society and the burden of publicly suffering for her sins. Despite a substantial amount of time having passed since Puritan times, the themes that Hester Prynne had to experience are still pertinent. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, is driven mad by his incessant need for revenge and in society today there are many occasions where people are plagued with the desire to seek vengeance. There are some instances in life where human nature takes over without people even realizing and revenge is one of them. Also, people are right when they say “history repeats itself” because some of these themes never go away. The Scarlet Letter takes place in the strict religious time of the 1600’s and although the book seems outdated and obsolete, the ideas inside are still relevant and therefore high school students should continue to read this work

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, The Scarlet Letter, an American novel that follows the events of a young woman, Hester Prynne, who is living in 1640’s Boston, Massachusetts. Because she committed adultery she is punished by the puritanical town she resides in by wearing a scarlet letter “A” on her chest forever. Throughout the novel, Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth, strives to discover the identity of the father who is the beloved minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. Chillingworth's mission for discovery and revenge causes him to commit the sin of intellect which affects the people surrounding him. Hester is constantly emotionally distressed from Chillingworth’s sin, but is rewarded from her sin of passion. The physical and mental state of Dimmsdale is ruined by the sin of intelligence, but also partially by the sin of passion. Not intentionally, Chillingworth’s sin of intellect affects him the most by changing him morally, physically, and mentally. The effects that the sin of intellect causes are far worse in contrast to the sin of passion. Major changes in Hester’s emotional state, Dimmesdale's severe health reduction, and Chillingworth’s drastic shift in character are reasons why the sin of intellect overpowers sin of passion in the severity of the sin.