Scarlet Letter Identity Quotes

Hester displays acts of courage that portray her as a heroic character. Hester clearly suffers from her punishment of having to wear the scarlet letter ‘A’ in public as she attempts to maintain

“On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him." Chapter 1, pg. 46

to bear. One might think that it would have been better if Hester had left the town. Then she would not have had to endure such torture. Hester, however, knows that this is her town and she cannot leave. She knows that this small town is part of her identity. She

Isolation is an individual or place being separated, to be or remain alone or apart from others. In “The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorn, Reverend Dimmsdale and Hester Prynne committed an unacceptable sin during the prutain times, adultery. The major punishment Hester had to face was to serve many months in prison, attach a scarlet letter, “A” on her chest, and stand on the scaffold for couple of hours under public scrutiny. "Thus the young and the pure would be taught to look at her, with the letter flaming on her chest…. as the figure, the body and the reality of sin"(73). Holding onto the sins you’ve committed can lead to isolation and alienation.

From the start of the novel, Hester is portrayed in exile. She begins in the jail, and soon after is paraded through the streets to start her public exile with her child, Pearl. This first public shame caused Hester to feel “as if her hear had been flung in the street for them all to spurn and trample upon (Hawthorne 52).” The

Set in seventeenth-century Boston, “The Scarlett Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story of principal human values and the consequences if said values are replaced with deceit and falsehood. Sincerity and honesty are indirectly pinned as requisites by Hawthorne in order to be a genuine and sane person in society. This is best expressed in the line, "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.” Hawthorne continued his claim by recounting the stories of Pearl, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth who all went about deceit differently or not at all.

I believe that Hester returns to Boston because, chooses to settle in an abandoned cabin on the edge of town, where she serves as an

Tony Robbins, author, life coach, and motivational speaker said that “Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.” (Robbins) In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne reveals Boston, Massachusetts in the middle of the 17th century. Littered with Puritans in Boston during that time and their principles taking over much of the social order itself, it is safe to say that today’s Christian views are not nearly strongly represented as a whole in the general public. Furthermore,

Is the story about frustration of revenge or victory over shame? This story could go either way. It could be all about Roger Chillingworth’s revenge and hate towards Arthur Dimmesdale or it also could be about Hester Prynne and Dimmesdale, about how they overcome their fear of shame and take responsibility for their sins. Even though both play a huge roll in this story it is mainly about the victory over the shame of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale.

"Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past"(Hawthorne 304 ) I decided to pick this quote because that's how Hester feels towards the end of the book. That was said right after Hester took of the scarlet letter in the forest. She feels great again, she's comfortable with her self and she's free from being judged by any one because there's no one there to judge her. In the beginning of the story Hester isn't comfortable with her self, she doesn't like what she's become. Hester's personality changes as the story continues and as it progresses to different "When the young women - the mother of this child- stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the child to her bosom… she took the baby with a burning blush and yet, a haughty smile" (Hawthorn

We can see these themes in our main characters. I believe we can see pride in Mrs. Chillingsworth. It may not be the first thing you think of when reading or seeing him but i think we can see it in him. We can see his pride when he takes it upon himself to torture Dimmesdale and he does it so with a passion unlike anything besides pride.

Characters Evolve The Scarlet Letter was a challenging book to read. The book was hard for me to understand until I got half way into the book. While reading this book, I learned of many lifelong lessons that these characters experience. 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 this world, there are two kinds of people: the honorable and the malevolent. Rarely do we ever find those with pure hearts. Revenge, a tactic used by the malevolent, is a way to demonstrate antagonism against people through the process of making their lives miserable until one’s rancor has become successful against their enemy. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne displays how a single sin gives a man with zero spirituality, rash goodness, eminent intelligence and soaring strength, the motivation to gain vengeance upon the man with whom his wife has committed the sinful act of adultery. Roger Chillingworth, the husband of Hester Prynne, becomes the antagonist in this novel when he discovers that his wife had conceived a child that

Pearl is the one in control of the scarlet letter, through the novel. She has a fixation on the letter since she was a baby and carries it through the book, causing there to be no escape from the symbol for her mother. She is also a living representation of the scarlet letter, through her fixation and her physical appearance. She is one of the aspects controlling the stigma of the letter. Pearl is the scarlet letter shown through her fascination, appearance, and control.

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