Goodness And Evil In The Scarlet Letter

In Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the deceptive Roger Chillingworth could most certainly be considered a morally ambiguous character. Throughout the novel, Roger Chillingworth everlastingly remains misleading as to whether he lies on the side of good or evil. Even at the end of The Scarlet Letter, the knowledge of Roger Chillingworth is extremely nebulous. The mysterious Roger Chillingworth, although ultimately emanating to be evil, attests to be a challenge when determining his morality. Roger Chillingworth attempts to beguile us by enacting the role of a physician, and ensconces his relationship with Hester Prynne. He lives with Arthur Dimmesdale, vindicating that he is serving Arthur Dimmesdale a helpful medicine, while

Sin is the foundation of good and evil in today’s society. Without out this factor there would be no judging in society but peacefulness everywhere. We live in a society where sin is the tool that runs our culture. When many of us consider "What is sin?" we think of violations of the Ten Commandments. Some other people consider murder, adultery, theft, etc as sins too. In the Tokens of Trust by Rowan Williams he illustrates the language of the “orginal sin” “ is a tangle that goes back to our very roots of humanity”. According to the Marriam-Webster dictionary sin is defined as an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.

In the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne makes many references to the devil and evil’s influence on major characters and on the people in the town. The major characters change the way they act towards one another, and are physically and mentally affected negatively. The evil influence not only affects how the people in the town act towards each other but if affects how different people view the scarlet letter that Hester wears. Hawthorne also tries to convince the reader that Pearl’s existence is evil, but good things can come from evil as well as bad. By describing these instances Hawthorne drives the point that the devil and evil overtime are prominent themes and shape the plot.

Merriam-Webster 's Dictionary defines adversity as, "a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune; ex. showing courage in the face of adversity" (Merriam-Webster). Unfortunately, life is not fair. Sometimes, people are faced with serious misfortune and must adapt to survive. And sometimes in this state of adaption, the person will learn new skills from the misfortune and can apply those skills to everyday life. Nathaniel Hawthorn 's The Scarlet Letter is a story that takes place in a harsh, puritanical 17th century society called the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In reality, it was actually Boston,

Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Puritan community defined sin as anything that “deviated from the highest aspirations of the Puritan founders” (“Reading the American Past” 68). The Puritans attempted to create a godly community by trying to diminish what they considered sins. They most certainly failed at creating this type of society.

The world of Puritan New England, like the world of today, was filled with many evil influences. Many people were able to withstand temptation, but some fell victim to the dark side. Such offences against God, in thought, word, deed, desire or neglect, are what we define as sin (Gerber 14).

Adversity is when you are in a difficult situation or facing one. Adversity is very common in literature because there is conflict in every story. In, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the three main characters Hester, Dimmesdale and, Chillingworth, all face adversity through the sin of adultery. Through the characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth, Hawthorne shows how a person can be either destroyed by how one responds to adversity. Early in the book Hester faces adversity when she commits adultery with Dimmesdale and as her punishment she is forced to where a bright scarlet letter “A”. As a result of this she becomes very distant from the rest of the townspeople. People say very nasty and rude things to her but this

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines sin as “an offense against religious or moral law”. People have many motivations to sin: greed, self-gain, and pleasure being prominent examples. In “The Scarlet Letter”, Hester Prynne is convinced that her husband is not coming to meet her at their new home in the colonies because she believes that he may have died. She then has an affair setting in motion the events of the story. In “Frankenstein”, Victor Frankenstein idolizes scientific knowledges thereby leading him to create and abandon his monster; this results in the deaths of three of Victor’s loved ones. In “Idylls of the King”, Pelleas becomes the Red Knight of the North after he experiences rejection by Ettarre and after Guinevere’s unfaithfulness to King Arthur is exposed. By using examples from “The Scarlet Letter”, “Frankenstein”, and “Idylls of the King” I will make the case that the initial sin of a person creates situations which cause

The story, “The Scarlet Letter” was a very unique but yet so similar story. Due the fact, that it was plenty of exemplification of evil in the novel and seemed to be replication of the story about Adam and Eve from the book of genesis. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As a result of Adam and Eve knowing about their humanness, which made them be separated from the divine and from other creatures. However, the experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering.

The author (2007) also points out the importance of the Roman Catholic views point about confession and penance has three significate merits to confession. The first significate merit is that consistent confession forces one to confront one’s sin, meaning that one will not merely overlook or diminish one’s transgressions; instead it will cause one to take their sin more earnestly (p 213). The second significate is that the act of penance, paying a price for sin, creates a mindfulness of the significance of sin, meaning that it will not allow one to have a carelessness understanding toward sin of thinking that one will always be simply forgiven; instead penance combats this predisposition by arresting consequences for one’s sin (p 213). The third Significate merit is that it lifts the burned of guilt by forgiveness being granted during the ritual of penance, which can be extremely redemptive for some individuals (p

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of Puritan Society as a whole as the antagonist in The Scarlet Letter shows that societal norms and what is considered socially acceptable causes people to act and judge the way they do. With religion being the bond that hold the Puritan community together, The Bible and the teachings of the church dictate what people in that society interpret as right or wrong. There is no true villain in the novel because in order for there to be a villain there must be a clear struggle between good and evil, and the struggles in The Scarlet Letter cannot be classified as explicitly good and evil, because based on the reader’s opinion on the sins the characters committed, who is truly ‘good’ and who is truly ‘evil’ will vary. While

In the stories of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the antagonist characters display parallel story lines through their searches for the enemy. Roger Chillingworth, the former husband of Hester Prynne and the antagonist of The Scarlet Letter, works against his wife in order to find her untold second lover. Frankenstein is a contrasting story in which an unnamed monster is the antagonist towards his human creator, Dr. Frankenstein. Yet despite quite different story lines, the two characters possess traits that exibit parallels between them. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth displays the startling passionate characteristics of an unwavering drive to seek out his foe, madness as his focus on his search takes over his entire being, and terrible anguish when his task is unexpectedly over, all of which are reflected in the daemon created at the hand of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein.

Through the years, it has been known that sin is bad and is at the root of evil. Many claim that it causes feelings of guilt; feelings that do not easily go away. Nathaniel Hawthorne stated his feelings by stating “Show freely to the world, if not (their) worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred.” to say how he felt people should react after they commit sins. He tells future posterity of how they can be redeemed of their sins, and though he may have been correct on some of the ways to repent, he may have also missed some key details. While we do need to come forward from our sins to be completely forgiven, it may not be necessary to become a living embodiment of the sin like Nathaniel believes that we should be.

Do you ever think about what holds your family together? What if your family was hanging on by a letter an actual letter? In the book The Scarlet Letter three of the four main characters have a strong connection, an attachment. They make it through some of the hardest times even at a distance, from being years apart, but yet only a few feet away. The light and dark imagery, alluding to the larger conflict between good and evil, is present throughout the novel in the characters of Hester Prynne, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and Pearl.

In The Scarlet Letter, the perception of sin deviates from person to person. The deviation occurs on the severity of the sin that was committed and who committed the sin. Focusing on Hester and Dimmesdale, it is easy to compare the consequences of coping with the perception of their sins, on a private and a public level. The outcome of dealing with their sin is extremely different. The theme of morality affects Hester and Dimmesdale as well. They have varying levels of morality and this changes during the course of the novel.