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Scarlet Letter Isolation Quotes

Decent Essays

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. The cause of Hester’s alienation was because she refused to identify the other adulterer. …show more content…

He admits to his schemes and gave a reasonable explanation of why he’s doing it. Chillingworth is still bummed out about Hester’s new lover, and it reminds him of how lonely he is. The quote shows that not only Chillingworth is isolated by society, but also from Hester. “Here on this wild outskirt of earth, I shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments.” (26th page of chapter 4). After the crime of adultery, many things have changed including Hester’s appearance. The clothing she wears and her hairstyle changed from being beautiful to plain. She wanted to be invisible to society, to be unnoticed, but it was difficult for her because of the letter “A” she still wears on her chest. “On the outskirts of town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills toward the west.”

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