Contrasting Places In Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter submerses the reader in the Puritan’s culture. The story involves the Puritans portrayal of the sins of a young woman. Although a difficult read, the book stirs the reader to obtain a high moral compass. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne uses the symbols of light and dark to depict good and evil among the characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.

The settings in The Scarlet Letter are very important in displaying the themes of the novel. The settings in this novel are almost characters, for they are an important part in developing the story. The scaffold, the forest, the prison, and Hester’s cottage are settings that show sin and its consequences result in shame and suffering.

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.

This ridicule has a trickle down effect on Hester as she too is banished from her own community for committing adultery. The comparison between Hester and Hawthorne defines the external struggle for the reader to fully understand the effect of opinions from society on them Although reluctant to allow Hester to leave prison, the members of the town suggest that her punishment be to wear a scarlet red letter A on her bosom, thereby allowing all to know of her crime. The scarlet letter “ was red-hot with infernal fire, ” (Hawthorne 81) and defined the state she was currently in, that being eternal hell. Though she was forced to marry an older man at a young age, her rebellion to have an affair is not seen as an internal struggle that she overcame; rather, it is merely seen as a woman who sinned, a woman who shall therefore endure the punishment for the sin, rather than a woman who was never given a say in what she wanted with her life. Time and again, Hester Prynne is seen defying society by allowing herself to stand out from societal norm just as the roses “with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner“ (Hawthorne) did. Instead, she returns to the community and is observed aiding those in need, all with seven year old Pearl by her side.

Her decision to stay in the town is a form of self-penance which Hester uses to punish herself. Hester’s home is far from the town, but in close proximity to the woods. The woods symbolize her closeness to freedom from her exile, but she is tied to the place of her sin. She believed that New England “should be the place of her earthly punishment (Hawthorne 74).” However, she does meet with Reverend Dimmesdale in the woods, which closely connects both of them to the “Black Man, who haunts the forest”, who is the Devil and the ultimate symbol of evil (Hawthorne 72). She is also described as living in a “moral wilderness”, meaning that her exile from society caused her to develop her own ideas outside of the established ones of the

In Nathaniel Hawethorne’s The Scarlet Letter, five scenes stand above the rest in the entirety of the book. Each of these scenes focusing on one of the main characters, Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, who’s real name has never been revealed. In order of occurrence, the scenes which have been deemed most important include, Hester on the scaffold holding Pearl as an infant, and Roger Chillingworth visiting Hester while she is still in the prison being two examples. Another being what many would consider the climax of story is when Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in the darkness. The final two being Dimmesdale and Hester’s meeting in the forest, and the day upon which Arthur confesses his sins and passes on. Though these are all strictly opinion, they are key points in the novel.

When two authors from distinctly different societies and historical periods build stories around the same theme, there is an undeniable importance in the message being delivered. One of the authors bringing this message about is author of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne tells the story of Hester Prynne, a Puritan women in seventeenth century Boston, Hester, having committed adultery, is branded with a scarlet ‘A’ on her chest. The story describes the animosity that society feels towards her and her daughter Pearl, through the story Hester redefines the meaning of the ‘A’ and Pearl’s life is formed in a new light. While the setting of twentieth century Baltimore is unlike that of early Puritan society, The Other Wes Moore

Hester brings up this idea because she has had time away from the town and had no one to guide her on this path that she took. She does not think about how townspeople are going to perceive her and Dimmesdale leaving simultaneously. Hester very much resembles the forest because the forest cannot be tamed. The forest grows how it wants and only stops when others force it to. Hester will only gain guidance when the town forces her to listen to them. The forest also knows to show who Hester and Dimmesdale are inside: “Such was the sympathy of Nature-that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illuminated by higher truth- with the bliss of these two spirits!” (139). The forest shows the truth about the townspeople. The forest was always dark around Hester when she had her letter on because of her sin. Hester removes her letter once she and Dimmesdale confirm that they are going to go to Europe. Once Hester removes her scarlet letter, the whole forest lights up. Hester has removed the symbol of her wrongdoing because it no longer is a part of her. Seven years has past and no one in the town remembers what the A stands for anymore. They believe that it means able because Hester has dedicated her life to making clothes for the townspeople. She never commits her transgression again and works to make her life good. The forest reflects who the townspeople are and shows their true self once they realise

In nearly everything she does, as a young child, she finds immense pleasure. However, the forest is also a safe place. the unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes all fastened upon her, and concentrated on her bosom. Her existence came from what Puritanism deems “evil”. Hester demonstrates human naturalness by obeying her instinctual urges and having a relationship with Reverend Dimmesdale.

Have you ever done something to make yourself unwanted somewhere? The book, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, during the 17th century. Now and then are very different times, the townspeople wanted Hester dead, but in this time, there would be very little punishment. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne uses the symbols of light and dark to depict good and evil among the characters Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.

In the Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne discusses the hurdles Hester Prynne, the protagonist, goes through due to her sinful nature with her child, the mocking Puritans, and the past always creeping up on her. Often these obstacles appear when she is in the forest, making it a very critical locality in the book. Nathaniel Hawthorne brilliantly uses symbolism to convey how the three main aspects of the forest—the stream, the logs, and the sunshine— all correlate to the Scarlet A that Hester wears on her chest.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer in the 1800s, an anti-transcendentalist, and the great-nephew of John Hathorne, a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne is obsessed with Puritanism and, due to being obsessed, bases all his writings on Puritan towns. All of his stories take place in New England in the 1600s, before the Salem Witch Trials; The Scarlet Letter is one of these stories. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of the Wild Rosebush, Hester’s Cabin, and the sunlight and the forest to contribute to the overall theme of imperfection.

The harsh townspeople force her up on the scaffold to be humiliated in front of the whole town. Not only is she sent up on the scaffold with her sin revealed by the “A” for everyone to see, Hester becomes an example of what a woman should not come to be. The author is talking about Hesters experience on the scaffold and her pregnancy, “Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion”(32). Hester looses her individuality and is labeled by the townspeople and known for the Scarlet Letter. Further, the townspeople singled her out as an alien or outcast of the town forcing her to live an abnormal live. She was ridiculed and known for her one sin, unable to have acceptance back into society. Although the townspeople feel as if Hester has brought sin upon there lives, she clearly have not harmed any of the townspeople physically, and they have no grounds to punish Hester. The cause of the townspeople's harsh disciplinary acts on Hester originates from a strict, unrealistic standards of puritan society and the zero tolerance of any ungodly behavior observed in the town. Due to the absence of proper justice, Hester's sentencing is left up to the harsh townspeople in which they show no mercy or

The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a novel that takes place in the town of Boston, Massachusetts in 1642. Hester Prynne, the main character of the story, commits the sin of adultery. Because of this sin, she is "blessed" with a child named Pearl. Her punishment is to wear a scarlet letter “A" on her chest for the rest of her life, which affects the way the townspeople look and act around her. Also, she must stand on the scaffold in the town for three hours for the whole town to recognize her grave sins. The man who should be standing upon the scaffold along with her and Pearl is the town minister, Dimmesdale. He is presented as a weak character because of his fear of losing his beloved reputation as such a holy

In the novel Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne presenting the idea for humans to endure the laws of nature and conscience, rather than following the laws of man, to fulfill happiness. The novel consists of a young woman named Hester Prynne carrying her infant daughter named Pearl. The golden letter "A" embroidered on Hester’s bosom symbolizes adultery, a vile sin which is looked down upon in her community. She encounters Dimmesdale, an influential Puritan priest who commits adultery with Hester. Their main priority is to escape their society and live a new life. There are many symbols displayed in the Scarlet Letter, in particular, wilderness vs. civilization. The wilderness represents opposing behaviors while civilization represents bounded to rules.