Scarlet Letter Light Vs Light Essay

Hester is a character portrayed in both the light and the dark as she walks out of prison. She is free of sin, but is reminded everyday by the letter she wears. Hester struggled with the Puritan’s intolerance to Pearl and her. Hester “like a black shadow emerging out into the sunshine like she was free of sin” depicts the contrast between light and dark. (Hawthorne 49). When she walked into the sunshine she felt like something was lifted off of her chest. As a seamstress she had “sewn on her chest in bright red…an A” (Hawthorne 50). This mark symbolized the acceptance of her sin.

Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the ideology of Puritan society in the novel the Scarlet Letter; however reader also get to witness his characters being an illustration of hypocrisy and victims to their own guilt. In the Scarlet Letter, as in many of Hawthorne’s shorter works, he makes profuse use of the Puritan past: its odd exclusionary belief, its harsh code of ruling, its concern with sex and witchcraft. The Scarlet Letter is a story that is embellished but yet simple. Many readers may view this novel as a soap opera due to the way Hawthorne conveys this Puritan society’s sense of strictness and inability to express true emotion along with the secrecy and how deceiving the characters are being. As the story unfolds the main character Hester Prynne is bounded in marriage at an early age. She engages in an adulterous affair with an unknown member of their small village. Hester soon becomes pregnant and with her husband’s absence the chances of this child belonging to her husband are slim. The towns’ people know that she has committed a sin and imprisons her for her crime.

People have been stereotyping outcasts since the beginning of time. This behavior is a crucial component of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter. The main character of the story, Hester Prynne, resides in a community of Puritans; who are notorious hypocrites. Their harsh rules are basically impossible to follow, therefore setting their citizens up for failure and punishment. Hawthorne tells the story of Hester Prynne with the elements of sin, judgement, and revenge.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, is a compassionate yet riveting piece of English literature that supports the movement for equality of suppressed women during a most tumultuous time during the 1800’s. Hawthorne’s use of emotional diction and imagery throughout his novel employs a deplorable tone upon the story. It serves as a stark representation of an imaginative yet realistic example of the indifference of men and women during these changing times. Deeply held Puritanical beliefs led countless of people to believe that individuals, especially women, who committed sins of any type would never reach heaven upon their passing. Men, on the other hand, were judged less severely if accused of a crime. Hester Prynne, the

The Scarlet letter takes place in a puritan society. Where the town revolves around punishment. They do not believe in pleasure and believe that humans are mostly evil. These people are Anti-transcedentalist. The main characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, Pearl and chillingworth support this theory that the citizens believe. Hester is a beautiful women and she has a kind her. She enjoye sewing and she gives all the only she makes from sewing to charity, while donating clothes to them also. Hower, Hester and Dimmesdale committed the sin of adultery and created Pearl. Chillingworth is Hester’s husband but not the father of her daughter. In his novel “The Scarlet letter” , Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of Pearl, the burrs and sunlight to

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is often renowned as his best work. The novel tells about the rigid ideas of 19th century Puritan New England through the story of Hester Prynne, Minister Dimmesdale, and Pearl. Hawthorne points out that the Puritans are often more ready to judge, punish, and damn someone than to forgive them. He is very critical of this idea, and goes against it by ending the novel with Hester Prynne becoming a respected individual that other women often look to for advice, and by changing the perception many people have of the Scarlet Letter from, “Adultery” to “Able”. Throughout the novel Hawthorne refutes the harsh ideals of the Puritans through the

Hester shows some good examples of light and dark. She is known for her beauty and her wonderful needlework. The towns people may despise her for the sin she has committed, but that doesn’t stop them from seeing all the beauty and skill she has, plus the devotion she has for using those skills to help other people. “Except for the small expenditure in the decorations of her infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them” (Hawthorne 77). The quote explains the true person Hester really is. Also how unselfish she has become through her situation. To become the women, she was, Hester went through some very dark times to become the person she became. At the beginning, the people of the town

Throughout the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses several biblical allusions to emphasize the Puritan society this novel was set in and give the reader a comparison of Hester to biblical figures, both holy and unholy. The Puritan society was one of strict adherence to the Bible and its teachings; consequently, Hester’s sin is not easily forgiven. Through his use of biblical allusions Hawthorne provides the reader with a historical figure that portrays characteristics or aspects similar to that of Hester. Hester’s curious child, Pearl, is both a blessing and a curse. She completely changed the course of Hester’s life, at a great price.

Darkness reminds us of the core associations of the Scarlet letter in terms guilt and sin, which are related to Hester. Next to each other, Hester and Pearl are heavily juxtaposed. Pearl personifies the sunshine when she says it "does not love" Hester. This implies that nature itself has been biased against Hester because of the scarlet letter.

The Puritans believe that it is their job, as well as the job of the communities in which they live, to glorify God in everything they do by living holy lives. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is a novel about the struggles that Hester, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale, have to face living in a Puritan society. Throughout the novel these three characters are faced with isolation and secret guilt. All three have to face their sins both internally and externally.

In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the theme of sin viewed through the prism of many colors is the essence of the novel. The protagonist, Hester, her child, Pearl, and the Reverend Dimmesdale all live in a Puritanical society in Boston, and are subject to the Puritans' strict religious beliefs and rigid attitudes. Exposed to sin and the temptation of its concealment in varying degrees, these characters evolve through the novel in different ways. Hawthorne brilliantly displays these differences by juxtaposing extreme and vivid colors—concealment is shown in dark, drab, and gloomy shades, while openness has a bright and colorful sheen. In this way, Hawthorne establishes a dichotomy between lack of color and color in order to show

In the Puritan society, the Scarlet Letter represents the Puritan’s view on the "sin of adultery" that Hester has committed in her life. However, Hawthorne shows throughout the novel that the Scarlet Letter evolved to be a potent symbol of Hester’s identity. The scarlet letter "A" again was originate to represents adultery, however it also represents rebellion against the puritan culture. Hester's attachment to the scarlet letter isolates her from the puritan’s society but it allows her to have freedom on her beliefs and actions as quote “She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom” (Hawthorne). Later when she believes her relationship with the town minister, Dimmesdale is pure base on her 'free will’; she separates her 'free will' against the Puritan definition of 'sin'. As a result, it is a symbol of Hester's pride and burden. Because of this, Hester was forced to carry the scarlet letter of which she later accept the letter and the identity that it has placed upon her as quote, “She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness... Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers—stern and wild ones—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss” (Hawthorne). Overall, her sin teaches her a lesson while obstructs her at the same

"Those who before had known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped" (39).  Hester, who is being openly condemned for her sins, Hawthorne describes ironically.  To the Puritans, Hester should be dim and obscure, surrounded by darkness and evil.  However, Hawthorne instead describes her shining beauty and the godliness she makes out of her sin and shame by exposing it to the public.  The Puritans condemn Hester for her sin and look towards her as evil, yet she is exposing her sin to the sunshine, to the public, something that Hawthorne praises in the novel.  "A blessing on the righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine!  Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!" (40).  The Puritans feel that they are hurting Hester Prynne by exposing her sin, yet it is only making her stronger and making her grow.

Not one group of people took sin more seriously than the Puritans, as they took strong conviction into the belief that everyone is a sinner and that sin is deplorable and unacceptable. With a deep passion for the Bible and its teachings, they believed that the wickedness of mankind was plaguing humans and was worthy of harsh punishments, such as public humiliation, whippings, and brandings. Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, there is a large emphasis set on the effects of sin on the characters of the book, primarily, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Though these two individuals’ most prominent sin is virtually alike, the two are affected by their act of adultery in entirely different ways. While Hester, being forced

Opposing Puritan Society Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a novel depicting a theocratic Puritan society and a woman buried in secrets and sin. The Puritan society described in The Scarlet Letter believes that religion is law. Hester Prynne, the novel’s protagonist, is accused of adultery and is forced to wear the letter A over her breast as a warning for all Puritans to abstain from sin. Hester Prynne’s adultery resulted in the birth of Pearl, who is often described as beautiful but demon-like.