Scarlet Letter Vs Ethan Frome Essay

In The Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy is evident everywhere. The characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the very society that the characters lived in, were steeped in hypocrisy. Hawthorne was not subtle in his portrayal of the terrible sin of hypocrisy; he made sure it was easy to see the sin at work , at the same time however, parallels can be drawn between the characters of The Scarlet Letter and of today’s society.

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.

Society has unintentionally been guided by the same themes since the beginning of time. The recurring themes that are present in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic The Scarlet Letter are still relevant in today’s society. When high school students and teachers claim that Hawthorne’s novel is archaic and should be removed from the curriculum, they are absolutely wrong. Hester Prynne, the main character of the novel, commits adultery and as punishment, has to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest for everyone to see. Throughout the novel, Hester is faced with obstacles such as the struggle between self and society and the burden of publicly suffering for her sins. Despite a substantial amount of time having passed since Puritan times, the themes that Hester Prynne had to experience are still pertinent. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, is driven mad by his incessant need for revenge and in society today there are many occasions where people are plagued with the desire to seek vengeance. There are some instances in life where human nature takes over without people even realizing and revenge is one of them. Also, people are right when they say “history repeats itself” because some of these themes never go away. The Scarlet Letter takes place in the strict religious time of the 1600’s and although the book seems outdated and obsolete, the ideas inside are still relevant and therefore high school students should continue to read this work

People in this world face temptation everyday. Some temptations might be not wanting to get out of the bed in the morning when the alarm clock goes off to resisting to eat that last piece of cake but it looks so yummy and delicious so they just decide to deal with the consequence of maybe getting some extra fat. Other temptations may be bigger and maybe even life changing like wanting to take that new job or be with that new person, but whatever a person does, most of the time there are consequences to those temptations. Some might not have bad consequences, a person just has to choose wisely in the decision making. In Ethan Frome and The Scarlet Letter, the characters both face temptations that result in a bad outcome for both of them. Edith Wharton and Nathaniel Hawthorne create temptations that the characters have to face and chose decisions wisely so they do not get scorned by their society. In both of these novels, the characters commit sins that their society deems inappropriate. Mattie goes against what society thinks is right and tries to be with her sisters husband. Hester, like Mattie, commits adulterer and has a child as the outcome.

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 genuinely shows the difference between the Puritan’s view of sin versus the Romantics' view of Sin. The Puritan church is deeply adamant that all sins should be punished; sin not easily forgiven and forgiveness is to be earned if possible. The entire scene is very hypocritical. The leaders and ministers hold themselves on a pedestal, as though they have never done wrong. An impeccable example; Arthur Dimmesdale, the man who Hester has an affair with, ironically the one who is questioning her and trying to convince her to tell the leaders who the father was. He knew without a doubt Pearl was his daughter. He was playing clue; keeping himself unblemished. Hester is a symbol of the new Romantic Era that was to come shortly after the uptight Puritan Church. Romantics held the beliefs

The punishment for this day and age for adultery was very serious. Hester had to go to jail and then got an “A” to wear on her chest for life to make sure that everyone was aware of the sin she committed. Pearl is a constant reminder to Hester of the serious sin that she committed and how it will affect her life forever. When the book, The Scarlet Letter introduces Hester it says the following, “ the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast….as the figure, the body, the reality of sin” (Hawthorne 76). Hester, her whole life was seen as a sinner and with that came Pearl as the result. One day while walking in the forest, “ Mother, said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. . . . It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet” (Hawthorne 180). This show Pearl making the connection of her sin and how the townspeople and everything surrounding them acts when they see the letter. Pearl symbolizes adultery because, she is a scarlet letter in the flesh and she is living proof of Hester's and Dimmesdale's

Shakespeare once said, “If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul.” In the 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter, a young woman named Hester Prynne was just that. Nathaniel Hawthorne tells a story of a young woman named Hester, who commits adultery, and how she struggles to raise a daughter, and keep her lover from judgement. In the Puritan society, honorable sin was not a possibility. Throughout the book, characters deal with consequences for their actions that change their views on how they should deal with problems. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingsworth, the main characters, all have consequences for their sins. In the book sin changes the characters’ personalities, choices, and actions.

   Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne repeatedly portrays the Puritanical views of sin and evil.  The Puritans are constantly displayed as believing that evil comes from an unyielding bond being formed between love and hate.  For such reasons they looked towards Hester's commitment of adultery as an action of pure, condemned evil.  However, through the use of light and dark imagery, Hawthorne displays who truly holds evil in their hearts.  The one who is the embodiment of evil creates hypocrisy of Puritanical views towards sin and evil.  Hawthorne displays that those who expose sin to the public and the daylight are the most pure and those who conceal their sin under a

Nathaniel Hawthorne's bold novel, The Scarlet Letter, revolves around sin and punishment.  The main characters of the novel sharply contrast each other in the way they react to the sin that has been committed

In The Scarlet Letter, sin and guilt represent the theme of morality throughout the entire novel. The scarlet letter “A” is the main representation of the protagonist assumed moral ineptitude. Yet there is a certain amount of vagueness that occurs at her initial appearance that leaves the reader a bit confused. Nathanial Hawthorne produces a marvelous piece of ambiguity that allows the reader to question their own idea of how morality is defined. While he works the theme of morality into all of the characters in the novel, the three main characters Hester Prynne, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale are the main focus if the idea of morality in the novel.

Set in seventeenth century Boston, The Scarlet Letter is a riveting tale about the life of an adulteress in the Puritan culture. The Scarlet Letter is written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The century in which the book takes place has much to do with the way Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl, are treated and judged by the townspeople. People in that time did not seem to treat an adulteress and the offspring of the affair as human beings. Hester, Pearl, and Arthur Dimmesdale, the preacher, are the main characters in the story. The major theme in this story could almost be perceived as karma. All darkness must come into light, and all sin will soon be known.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a man who was both plagued and absorbed by the legacy of the Puritans in New England. He was related to John Hathorne, a Puritan judge during the infamous Salem Witch trials of 1692. In The Scarlet Letter, his fictional account of mid-17th century Boston presents an opportunity to examine different themes commonly associated with Puritans. Particularly the nature of sin, personal identity and the repression of natural urges are themes that appear repeatedly through the novel. While his account of this time period may not be completely historically accurate, it is indicative of the persistent thematic influence of Puritan culture on American and New England society.

Novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his fictional novel, “The Scarlet Letter”, expresses a story about a young woman, Hester Prynne, back in the 1600s who was convicted of adultery and must now wear a big “A” on her chest to show those in the small Massachusetts Bay colony the sin she has committed. Hawthorne’s purpose is to illustrate the hardships Hester must go through for committing such act in the small colony where religion was put first. Hawthorne adopts a serious and pitiful tone throughout the novel to get the adult readers to sympathize with the main character, Hester Prynne. Though this book was written back in the 1800s and is based off a woman who’s shamed for adultery, this book can still relate to today’s world with some of

The Scarlet Letter is a modern classic of American literature written about controversy and published with controversy. The main topic of the book, adultery, is written in a dark and sad way, as Hawthorne describes injustice, fate or predetermination and conscience ( Van Doren, 1998) . No other American novel of the time has such a controversial theme as Hawthorne's, The Scarlet Letter. The setting of Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is the seventeenth century Puritan New England. But Hawthorne's writing for this book is heavily influenced by his own nineteenth century culture. Hawthorne strongly believed in Providence. Hawthorne was descended from the Puritan