Scarlet Letter Analysis Essay

In a novel that revolves almost solely around sin, the consequences of said sin, and redemption, there is no greater sin than that of revenge. No character in The Scarlet Letter is free of sin, but all gain some sort of redemption, save one Roger Chillingworth, who is arguably the greatest sinner of them all. Hester Prynne may have committed adultery, and Arthur Dimmesdale may have also committed adultery with Hester (as a priest, no less), but sins of passion are not the same as sins of vengeance and anger. These sins of revenge and madness are what Chillingworth is guilty of, ultimately making him the worst sinner in the entire book.

In the corners of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, stand two fascinating characters—Pearl and Roger Chillingsworth. In the story, Pearl is the illegitimate child of the protagonist, Hester Prynne, and the minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, while Chillingsworth is Hester’s estranged husband who everyone thought was dead. Both of these two supporting characters have a surreal presences and each are deeply involved in Hester’s life, particularly her life after the discovery of her adultry. With as many similarities as they have, the reader may question what the respective rolls of these two characters are. Much has been said about the characters individually, but in this paper I will explore how the characters relate to each other in the telling of the story. Based on the similarities, differences, and roles that the characters play in the story; I will explain how they many in fact be read as foils of one another.

Chapters 9 and 10 investigate the relationship in the middle of Chillingworth and Dimmesdale. On one level, Chillingworth speaks to "science" and Dimmesdale speaks to "deep sense of being." Like Chillingworth 's disfigured shoulders, Dimmesdale 's disease is an outward sign of an internal condition, and not medication or religion suffices to cure it. What hampers his recuperation is his failure to admit his infidelity with Hester, which is by all accounts due, in any event to a limited extent, to the group 's reliance on the adolescent priest. He comprehends that he, in the same way as Hester, is an image of an option that is bigger than himself—for his situation, devotion and goodness. As it were, admitting would mean mending himself at the cost of the community.dimmesdale considers other, apparently hopeless good contemplations. The numerous disagreements that he experiences may come from the constrictive and off and on again two-faced nature of the ethical framework. For instance, the priest declines to wed any of the ladies in the group who show sympathy toward him, both out of a feeling of duty to Hester and out of an unwillingness to embroil a blameless outsider in a dim history of "sin." On the other hand, by inactively holding up for God to deal with things, as he proclaims himself to be doing, Dimmesdale causes Hester to endure awfully.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set in the 17th century puritan Boston, Massachusetts, it tells the story of Hester Prynne who has a daughter named Pearl out of an affair and struggles to live her life a new and with dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores the themes of sin, guilt, and revenge. The Puritan town of Boston had gathered around to witness Hester's punishment for her crime of adultery. She was required to wear a scarlet “A” on her dress to shame her. She walks down the scaffold with dignity and takes this punishment and makes the best of it. She owns wearing the scarlet “A” by personalizing it with embroidery and making it beautiful. The women on the street are angered of how graceful and beautifully she

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is biblical in notion that there is sin in everyone, but it is up to God to judge. The theme of The Scarlet Letter is that revenge gets you nowhere and guilt is not the way. A determined woman refuses to speak out, but the secret is told and it costs two men their lives. Adam and Eve are guilty of sin and God punished them so perhaps that is the way it should stay.

In The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the story revolves around the lives and the events of the following characters: Hester Prynne, who is the mother of an illegitimate child with the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and is now being outcasted by her Puritan community because of it; the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale who is the charming minister of 17th century Boston, the father of an illegitimate child and has not had his sin revealed; then there's Roger Chillingworth who is the estranged husband of Hester Prynne who has given up a life-long pursuit of knowledge in exchange for one of revenge and evil. All of these main characters are important to the story of the scarlet letter, but the one who arguably has the most important and

First, Hawthorne uses Pearl as a symbol of imperfection. Pearl is the child of Hester Prynne, our main character, who wears the scarlet letter, and is the direct result of Hester’s adultery. Hawthorne explains, “[Hester] bore in her arms a child, a baby...its existence [was] only acquainted with the gray twilight of a dungeon,

     In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s American classic The Scarlet Letter the main character Hester Prynne is portrayed as the preeminent feminist heroine through the portraiture of her crime and punishment. In this novel, a Puritanical society in New England condemns Hester Prynne to wear a highly embossed depiction of the letter “A” on her breast as punishment for an act of adultery. How Hester handles the consequences of her castigation is what brings about the heroic feministic qualities of the main character. Three aspects that corroborate Hester Prynne’s qualities are: 1. Admitting her sin openly to fellow man and God, 2. Putting up with the taunting and social exile of

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a great piece of literature. It explores problems in society that still occur today. It is fascinating to see how the Puritans punished adultery then and the lack of punishment of adultery in our society now. It shows how all the characters affect Hester and what everyone does in the community. It shows that no one is exempt from any type of crime in that town. In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, he analyzes the characters of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Pearl.

Ambiguity occurs when an author presents an idea which is opened to interpretation with variable meanings and significance. Aspects of a book may have a different context for every reader, but there is an uncertainty behind each opinion because of ambiguity. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s books are, essentially, based upon ambiguity. To reveal ambiguity within novels, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter- which communicates the journey of the adulteress Hester Prynne in a zealous Puritan community and her struggle between her daughter, her living husband who was supposed dead, and her partner involved in the affair- is the embodiment of ambiguity compared to his other novels. Hawthorne’s novel has diverse, distinct ambiguous examples which one may choose to interpret;

In this novel you will find that the main characters are the prime examples of Love, Hate, Sin, and Purity. Although adultery is condemned and seen as sin, adultery isn't what Hawthorne focuses on. Through my analysis of the Scarlet Letter I noticed that there were three different types of love. The act of hatred plays a vile role throughout the novel. Hawthorne uses Pearl as a blatant symbol of purity, from her birth till the end of the novel. As you will see Love, Hate, Sin, and Purity does play a vital role in this story.

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

After Hester is released from prison Hawthorne leaves us wondering if her choice to stay in Boston was even a choice she could make. Chapter five opens with Hester coming into the light and leaving the cell in which she had been punished in for so long. However, once she is out, she decides to stay in Massachusetts, in the same community which has shamed her for so long. Hawthorne describes the decision when he writes, “it may seem marvelous, that this woman should still call that place her home… But there is a fatality… which almost invariably compels human beings to linger … the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime” (71). In this quote Hawthorne is not only speaking of Hester, he is speaking of

The Scarlet Letter is a book wrote by Nathaniel Hawthrone, he is an anti-transcendentalist writer, this book is about Hester Pyrnne the protagonist of this story and her family. This book takes place in a puritan town in the 1600s the town revolves around punishment , Hawthorne uses a lot of symbols to contribute to the overall theme of secret sin. Hester has one of the symbols on her bosom, that contributes to secret sin. She wears the scarlet letter because of the sin she has committed with someone who she was not married to. A lot is sacrificed by Hester for what she did, but in the end to her it was worth it.

“Women belong in the kitchen.” “All women should be barefoot and pregnant.” “Women are strictly homemakers.” These are a few of the commonly used phrases regarding the female role in society that date back to the mid-seventeenth century. However, ardent supporters of gender equality have surfaced in almost every culture where this ideology is practiced. Nathaniel Hawthorne explores this inveterate societal conflict through his story The Scarlet Letter. The main character, Hester Prynne, is punished for committing adultery by being forced to wear a scarlet letter upon her bosom; Hawthorne created a story sympathetic to the female cause and demonstrated, through Hester, qualities of early feminism that later establish themselves during his