Guilt In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Dimmesdale longs to confess his sin, but he cannot bring himself to do it. Dimmesdale has visions and delusions and begins to think falsely about the world. Dimmesdale feels as if there is a scarlet letter on his chest. When Dimmesdale brings himself to the platform where Hester was punished, Hester and Pearl join him. Pearl asks him if he will stand with them on the platform and he tells her on judgement day that he will. After time passes, people begin to think differently about Hester and the scarlet letter. They now consider the letter to be a sign of her strength. When Hester meets again with Roger Chillingworth she tells him that she must reveal the secret for the good of Mr. Dimmesdale. Hester wants Chillingworth to stop the evil practices

Let us gather here today as one- not as a group, but as a family.We all stand here today on a level scaffold. Many of you remember me as a nefarious citizen that stood on this here scaffold several years ago. Those who do not already know me, I am Hester Prynne- I have migrated from Amsterdam in hopes of coming to the New World, and in my past I have committed a terrible infraction. I am forever enduring the consequences for engaging in an act of adultery seven years ago. Although, 25% percent of those who have committed adultery go unnoticed and their only punishment is taking their guilt to the grave. There is a sinner among all of us. I am not here to justify the sin I have exerted, I am here to bring to a greater understanding that everyone here has sinned- whether or not you have dealt with the consequences that come along with sinning is dependent on if your community perceives it as a sin.

Media vita in morte sumus “In the Midst of life we are death.”, this phrase is used in traditional Western Christian liturgy and is recited for religious purpose. It was Attributed by Benedictine monk Notker I of Saint Gall dates back to 912, and sums up a quintessential christian idea that has been enforced from Before the Common Era to modern religion. Death is about life, eternal life. The miniscule quota of days spent on earth, does not begin to compare to the infinity of days that will be spent in the “promised land.” Repenting from sin during the short days on earth will be a small sacrifice for what is to come. Christianity in New England was irritatingly strict due to it being a Puritan Society. Jesus seems to

Sin, secrets, guilt, and shame are unfortunate occurrences that every person will encounter during a period of their life. The shame inflicted upon an individual will lead them down a difficult path, however in the end it will result in new knowledge and lessons essential for life. As shown in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, public shaming pushes characters such as Hester and Dimmesdale farther from the Puritan society that they had once considered family, it encouraged them to feel shame for their sins such as adultery and remain truthful in a society full of secrets, however in the end it opens their eyes to the world outside of their sins allowing them to grow and help others as well. First, being made victims of public

It’s easy to commit a sin, but it’s not so simple living with a guilty conscience. The courage to admit one’s sins is necessary for salvation from guilt. As soon as remorse fills a person’s heart, it will leave a permanent mark, and he or she will never forget that agony. Nathaniel Hawthorne exemplifies that sole truth in the Scarlet Letter, “And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded; so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there is still the ruined wall, and,

The novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne shows many themes as the book continues. The Scarlet Letter tells the journey of a young woman named Hester Prynne after she commits adultery and has a child named Pearl. The novel addresses the views of Hester, Roger Chillingworth- her husband, and Arthur Dimmesdale- her lover, and how guilt has impacted their live after the sin. Through the reading of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, readers learn that guilt changes over time.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter began in a small town in Boston on a very important day where Hester Prynne and her young child, Pearl were forced to stand on a scaffold and for Hester to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest for her crimes of adultery that created Pearl. The story continues to tell how Hester and her daughter grew up around the unknown father, Arthur Dimmesdale, who later reveals himself as such, and a Hester Prynne’s former husband who seeks revenge and now goes by the name of Roger Chillingworth. In the end after Dimmesdale and Chillingworth’s deaths Hester and Pearl move away and start a new life, although once Pearl has grown Hester comes back to her small town to live out the rest of her life in shame.

She is forced to wear the scarlet letter, A for adultery. Although Hester lives “on the outskirts of town” (Hawthorne 74), she lives a life of redemption. She uses her talent of needlework to make “coarse garments for the poor … [and] offer[ing] up a real sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork” (Hawthorne 77). In Chapter 13, Hawthorne skips ahead seven years and during these years, Hester has been pure from any sin. Her “token of sin” becomes “the symbol of her calling” and carries a new meaning: A for “Able” (Hawthorne 146). Since she was publicly humiliated, it leads her to her redemption in society. Pearl is Hester’s companion and friend. Although Pearl is the physical consequence of Hester’s sin, she is also a blessing. When Governor Bellingham wishes to remove Pearl from Hester’s care, Hester lashes back saying, “‘God gave me the child! She is my happiness.

Throughout The Scarlet Letter, the theme of “guilt” is prevalent and important; it is heavy and unrelenting in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s where the story is based. None of the main characters seem exempt from it, including Hester Prynne, the main protagonist and wearer of the scarlet letter, Arthur Dimmesdale, the town’s beloved minister and, later revealed, fellow adulterer, and Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband who lives under a pseudonym as the town’s doctor. Each one of them has a cross that they bear, influenced and made worse by the strict Puritan ways of the townspeople and each other, and the sins and regrets that torment them. Even worse, not only does guilt torment one emotionally

When the modern-day reader indulges in a novel published prior to the 1900s, they may not interpret the author’s work the way it was intended to be understood. A fine example would be The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the beginning of the novel, a young woman named Hester Prynne was found guilty of committing adultery. Her punishment was to wear a scarlet “A” on her chest to cause her to feel shame and to stand on the town’s scaffold for three hours to endure public humiliation. In this scene, Hawthorne assumes that his audience understands how horrifying it was for a woman to be found guilty as an adulterer in the 1600s. As Hawthorne thoroughly depicts, there was no separation between the church and state, so if a woman was found

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, takes place in 17th century, Puritan New England. Nathaniel Hawthorne was not a happy man. He was Anti Transcendentalist which meant he believed that all humans had a wild nature that only society could keep in check. This belief is reflected in all of his novels. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses the symbols of Pearl, Dimmesdale, and the Leech to convey the theme of guilt.

According Puritan moral values, one is guilty of adultery if married man or woman had a sexual relationship with a person who is not their wife or husband. The situation becomes worse when women bear an illegitimate child and such behavior is considered as one of the sinful acts in the Puritan society. The protagonist and the bearer of the scarlet letter “A” signify that Hester Prynne is an adulterer. Hester was married to an elderly scholar, Roger Chillingworth who sent her ahead to America to live but never followed her. While waiting for him, she had an affair with a Puritan minister named Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, after which gave birth to Pearl. Hester giving birth to Pearl became an attention of that Puritan society and she was humiliated in the public where she showed her faults to the world without revealing the names of Pearl’s father. Mr. Wilson said, “Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast.” “Never!” replied Hester Prynne. “It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony, as well as mine!” (Hawthorne, p 58). Unwillingness to reveal the name of Pearl’s father by Hester shows the strength and

The Scarlet Letter is about a woman, Hester Prynne, who is forced to wear the letter 'A' on her dress, representing adulterer. In the story, Hester Prynne bears a child without being married. In Hester's society, that is considered a crime because the society follows the Christian faith, which refuses to allow people to give birth without marriage, and therefore, Hester has to wear the scarlet letter. The father of the child, Pearl, is unknown until the end of the novel, which is the minister of the society, Arthur Dimmesdale. The scarlet letter is looked upon as a sign of shame. However, Hester Prynne shows the community that she is strong, even though she is carrying a heavy burden. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses symbolism to show how the scarlet letter is something that gives Hester Prynne courage and bravery through her own strength and

The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story of immorality, guilt, and vengeance. Hester Prynne, once an ordinary woman living in a New England colony, becomes branded as an adulteress when she is discovered to be pregnant. She is involuntarily forced into prison and after her release, is required to wear the scarlet letter “A” for the rest of her life, eternally being defined and perceived as an adulteress. The product of Hester and Dimmesdale, her clandestine lover and partner in the deed, is their daughter Pearl. Hester’s life is now forever different, because of her obligation to wear the “A” and her daughter Pearl. Both Pearl and the letter are direct effects of her sin and are symbols that represent elements of Hester’s life

“No amount of guilt can change the past…” Umar Ibn Al-Khattab once spoke the truth that many refuse to believe, however, it is a well established theme in multiple books. His statement rings true for the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne but not in the article,“Guilt: Or Why it’s Good to Feel Bad” by Jane Brody. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester and Dimmesdale, adulterers from a Puritan society that is completely against what they did, force themselves to live in the past over their sin of adultery, which is certainly not one of the worst sins one can commit. In “Guilt: Or Why it’s Good to Feel Bad”, Dr. Gaylin talks about how feeling guilty is a good thing because it prevents people from being antisocial, it causes people to seek punishments for what they did wrong, and because it is so good, it is far from wasteful, however, in The Scarlet Letter, what Dr. Gaylin says is clearly untrue. Guilt causes Dimmesdale and Hester a great deal of useless pain, as they can never change the past and because they're so caught up in it, they can never change in the future, they seek harmful punishments for their actions, and Hester becomes antisocial and isolated from society.