Jordan Berger. Mrs. Voshell. Honors English 10. 6 January

Desire, passion, love, sex, adultery, evil, religion, law, and judgement are the primary topics that make reading The Scarlet Letter more interesting. Caught up in passion, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, succumb to their desire in the forest. Hester is a married woman and Arthur Dimmesdale is the Puritan community minister. Their affair is adultery and brought to light when Hester becomes pregnant. Pearl is the illegitimate daughter of Hester and Dimmesdale.

Throughout the Scarlet Letter, Pearl illustrates the bondage of sin and love that exists between Hester and Dimmesdale. She embodies the scarlet letter “A” her mother is required to wear as retribution. Due to this, Pearl also embodies the retribution that Hester must face. Pearl is the physical symbol of Hester's sin, and because of this, Dimmesdale persuades the town’s ministers to permit Hester to be the legal guardian of Pearl. He informs the ministers that Pearl is a constant reminder of Hester's sin. Although Pearl is a constant reminder of Hester’s sin, she also represents the grace of God. In spite of Hester's and Dimmesdale's sin, Hester was bestowed a great gift in the form of Pearl. She is beyond society’s disdain and judgment.

Pearl, Hester’s child out of wedlock, then emphasizes on the idea of darkness following Hester when she declares to Hester, “the sunshine does not love you. It turns away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom” (Hawthorne 167). The letter on Hester’s bosom not only repel the townspeople, it drives off the sunshine and light that used to follow her wherever she went. She is considered as a social outcast among her peers and even the children of the community. However, still in the forest, when Hester rips the Scarlet Letter from her chest and throws it into the nearby brook, “all at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees” (Hawthorne 186). Once the letter is no longer attached to Hester, she is set free from her guilt and grief that she has endured for so many years. She is no longer controlled by the “iron-framework” (Hawthorne 111) of the puritan society and is able to be with Dimmesdale, her true lover, without the guilt that was brought upon her by the Scarlet Letter.

Hester has changed in so many different ways. First, Hester starts the story looking very ladylike, but as the story progresses she becomes to look manly. Some of the townspeople believed she had cut her hair off because she started always having it up. She starts to look ladylike again when she is in the forest with Dimmesdale. Hester said she had to stay in Boston to face what she had done but being with Dimmesdale changed her mind. She thought Dimmesdale and her could move away from all of their sin `and start fresh. Another reason why Hester wanted to move away with Dimmesdale is so Pearl can have a father figure in her life. “In vast London - or, surely, in Germany...thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge” (Hawthorne 218). Another way Hester grows is her choice of going with the Black Man. Hester would have gone with the Black Man to get away from all her troubles. Since they did not take Pearl away from her, Hester stayed and Pearl changed her view on life. “Had they taken her from me, I would have willingly have gone with thee into the forest” (Hawthorne 129). One of the changes that occur since she has gotten the Scarlet Letter is her view of people. She understands and has the knowledge of other’s sins but the downfall is she loses faith. The last change she goes through is her needing to wear the Scarlet Letter. “Townspeople say she may, she does take it off privately in the forest” (Johnson 133). At first, Hester believes she must wear the Scarlet Letter and if it gains another meaning or just falls off then it is okay not to wear it. Eventually, the forest is a place where she feels safe and away from the rules of the community so she feels it is okay to be able to take it off. There are many more changes or growths that Hester has went through but can people really relate to

To the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the scarlet letter contains a whole new meaning. He views the letter as a constant reminder of his sin and cowardice. His guilt continues to grow as a result of his not being able to come forth in front of the community and take responsibility for his actions. His guilt and sin become magnified by his inability to stand beside Hester at the scaffold. Dimmesdale, also is ironically charged with questioning Hester and trying to convince her of the importance of identifying her fellow sinner (Hawthorne 52). He begins to feel more and more grief and it begins to affect his mental and physical state. He soon becomes weak; however, it is believed by the community to be because of his "too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral relation" (Hawthorne 80). When Dimmesdale is believed to be near death, the community again believes it is because "the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet" (Hawthorne 88). Dimmesdale seems to be haunted by

In the Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is an attractive woman who has jumped into a loveless marriage with a man named Roger Chillingworth. He sends her to America to live in a Boston town however, to her knowledge, he disappears. She is considered to be a widow after two years without any trace of Chillingworth, and finds true love with the Puritan minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. In their passionate affair, they conceive a child named Pearl. The town is infuriated at Hester’s sinfulness and demands to know the father, although Hester refuses to release his identity. Hester’s husband then returns under a false identity and discovers Pearl’s father is Dimmesdale. He uses this knowledge to stay in a close proximity to the poor minister and torture his already guilt-ridden mind. While Hester is branded with her infamous flaming red “A” upon her breast and alienated from everyone, Dimmesdale must suffer in silence with only his secret to keep him company.

Hester states that she knows she committed a sin and it makes her stronger during the story, but Dimmesdale hides the fact and keeps to himself, which makes him weaker, later on, dying after a speech. Hester begins to acknowledge that the scarlet letter is predicted to mean ‘Able’, which makes her stronger as a woman and towards other people. Dimmesdale whips himself and buries the fact that he has sinned, causing him to become weaker later on. The theme of the novel shows the different ways to handle things that affect lives, and sets an example of other people who want to learn how to confess and recognize their own sins or

The scarlet letter, despite being Hester’s burden to bear, has a lot to say about all of the characters in the novel, main and supporting character’s alike. There are many themes and traits that the scarlet letter is tied to, but there are a select few that I felt most focused on throughout the novel that differ from character to character. Among concealed sin, self-torment, and many other linked concepts, the few that I will be pointing out pertain to the characters and are a large part of who that character is as an individual, not simply what they see or don’t see the scarlet letter meaning for those around them.

In the third scene the reader can start to understand how Chillingworth is driving Dimmesdale, who was the man Hester committed adultery with, insane. It also shows

The Scarlet Definition of Ambiguity How can a mere letter epitomize the conealed truths of an entire family? In literature underlying messages in morality and principles like this are occasionally expressed through symbolism, such is the case in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne’s romantic novel of sin and hypocrisy utilizes several characters, scenes, and objects to convey its messages in numerous fashions, as Millicent Bell further explains in The Obliquity of Signs: The Scarlet Letter. Of all the symbols presented in The Scarlet Letter, the title letter is the most prominent as it represents different meanings for Hester Prynne, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and their daughter Pearl.

The character Dimmesdale represents guilt because his name all in itself it shows that he is hiding something. He is dimming the truth as if he is hiding something. He is hiding his sin of adultery from the rest of the community so he is not shamed like hester has been. His guilt eats him alive and Chillingworth becomes a leech. He leeches on to Dimmesdale guilt and makes him feel bad for what he is done.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter, there are many important scenes. But there are five scenes that stood out and pushed the plot forward. This includes Hester walking out of the prison, Chillingworth finds out about Dimmesdale’s scarlet letter, and Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl. The final two being Hester meeting Dimmesdale in the forest and the Dimmesdale confessing his sin. These scenes are the key points in his novel.

The difference between Hester and Dimmesdale’s personal views on sin, and how they deal with their guilt are key themes within The Scarlet Letter.

She has worn it for so long it has not only become a part of her past but a part of her current identity as well. At the meeting Hester arranged between Pearl’s father and herself in the secluded woods, she rips it off her dress and casts it to the side to erase her sin, the sorrows it caused her, and forget the woman she has become over the years. Be that as it may, when Pearl sees that her mother is no longer wearing the scarlet letter, she “burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently, throwing her small figure into the most extravagant contortions. She accompanied this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on all sides. . . still pointing [her] small forefinger at Hester’s bosom” (Hawthorne 165-166). Her daughter punishes Hester for her rebellious act of removing the scarlet letter because she cannot complete her repentance process if she does not learn to embrace her true personality with the lifeless woman she has become through isolation. Pearl, now seven years old, should not understand that Hester is burying her personality under the scarlet letter since she has only known her mother as a dreary woman since her birth. Through her symbolic abilities, she perceives Hester’s intentions and puts a stop to

When Chillingworth enters town, Dimmesdale’s reputation begins to change because the people believe that Dimmesdale is associating with the ‘black man’- Chillingworth. The community has seen that Dimmesdale’s association with Chillingworth has had a negative impact, and that causes his reputation to suffer. From the point in time when Chillingworth entered the town, the people have seen Dimmesdale become thinner and more nervous and darkness consume Chillingworth, leading to this change in reputation. Dimmesdale has also started holding his hand over his heart frequently, leading to the communal belief that the A was having more of an effect, especially through its effect on Chillingworth and Dimmesdale: “To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan’s emissary, in the guide of old Roger Chillingworth” (112). By the end of the novel, Dimmesdale’s reputation was at it’s lowest point due to the revelation that he was Hester’s co-adulterer. The people were shocked when this was revealed, as “the multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit” (222). The conclusion to the novel discussed the repercussions of Dimmesdale’s