Sin and Personal Growth in The Scarlet Letter Essay

He finds out it was Dimmesdale and then set out to torture him. “[Chillingworth] never set him free again until he has done all it’s bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart” (Hawthorne 117). Hester tells Chillingworth to stop, but Chillingworth does not. He wants to get revenge on Dimmesdale. Because of this revenge, he loses Hester forever. Chillingworth tortures him in his own best interest. He is selfish. He wants Hester, even though Hester no longer loves him. Even after he has the chance to learn his lesson, Chillingworth still acts in his own interest. He learns that Dimmesdale and Hester are going to leave on a boat, and he books a ticket on the same boat, causing more problems for Hester and Dimmesdale. Chillingworth wants only what was in his own best interest, not what is better for others.

Reverend Dimmesdale was a renowned, prideful man stricken with sin and extreme guilt.  From the time Hester and Dimmesdale made love, he was grievous of his sin but he also felt a great love towards her.  Dimmesdale's stubborn pride troubled him greatly, and although he tried many times, he could not confess his sin to his religious followers.  Dimmesdale felt guilt so strongly that he scourged himself on his breast and patterned an “A” into his own flesh, yet he could not confess his sin until his grief grew so great it caused him to perish.  Reverend Dimmesdale's sin was greater than Hester's because he let his pride conflict with his repentance, and let his life be ruined by his anguish.

In The Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne is more than a literary figure in a classic novel, she is known by some people to be one of the earliest American Hero’s. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Hester commits adultery and has a child that she must care for all alone. She is forced to wear a powerful, attention grabbing “Scarlet A” on her chest while she must try to make a living to support her and her child, Pearl. Even though she must face all the harsh judgment and stares she does not allow her sin to stop her from living a successful life. She looks past the Letter as a symbol of sin and turns it into a sign of approval. Hester

From the beginning, we see that Hester Prynne is a young and beautiful woman who has brought a child into the world with an unknown father. She is punished by Puritan society by wearing the scarlet letter A on the bosom of her dress and standing on the scaffold for three hours. The scaffold is a painful task to bear; the townspeople gathered around to gossip and stare at Hester and her newborn child, whom she suitably named Pearl, named because of her extreme value to her mother. Her subjection to the crowd of

The transgressions that Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale perpetrates all begin when he commits adultery, and that causes him to reject his own daughter Pearl and her mother Hester. However, he still puts forward various different forms of atonement to pay for the awful wrong doings. When Hester is standing upon the scaffold Dimmesdale along with the other clergymen “stood in a

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the popular, gifted, young clergyman and in which no expected, was Hester Prynne’s secretive lover. The citizens of Boston saw him as the perfect man, who could do no wrong. Little had they known, his sin was just as bad as Hester’s. Just like Black’s quote stated, Reverend Dimmesdale, acted on his light side, and used his sins to preach his best of sermons. Hawthorne stated on page 131, ‘To the high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed…”. As many can observe, the young clergyman was a tremendous minister. He preached wonderful sermons and truly showed himself to be a man of God. Dimmesdale was a talented young man with a dark side that few people knew of. “…Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must be there” (Hawthorne 131). This shows while he was preaching tremendous sermons, his health started to deteriorate, due to his inner guilt he was holding within himself. Perhaps if his lingering sin had not expended him, he would have been able live a happier, healthier life. However, unfortunately for him, the secret he was keeping was eating at him from the inside out and his darkness was prevailing. Dimmesdale’s sin of keeping the

When The Scarlet Letter was written, a rise in feminist power and women's rights started creating ripples throughout the world. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, wanted to incorporate the idea of reversing gender roles.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written in 1849. This novel won him much fame and a good reputation as a writer. In writing The Scarlet Letter, Hawethorne was creating a form of fiction he called the psychological romance. A psychological romance is a story that contains all of the conventional trappings of a typical romance, but deeply portrays humans in conflict with themselves. The Scarlet Letter won Hawthorne great critical acclaim, and even today the book remains on the best seller list. The Scarlet Letter is so popular maybe because generations of readers can interpret it and see subtle meanings that somewhat reflect their own lives. Each of us, has

From this sin came a very happy and energetic girl “Pearl”. So from the beginning, we see the sin that was committed. We only know half of who the sin truly belongs. “I thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life.” (Hawthorne 53) This is the first time we get a glimpse of guilt and the possibility that Dimmsdale is the fellow-sinner. As a preacher who speaks against sin, this is extremely hard for him. He wants to tell the truth but Hester won’t let him. This sin begins to completely consume one character the Reverend Dimmsdale. The guilt he feels drives him mad and causes him to carve an “A” into his chest and wonders the streets while asleep trying to let his sin be known. He even sits upon the gallows trying to tell people. The secret sin within this work was the sin of adultery not for Hester but her lover Dimmesdale. Throughout his works he speaks of different sins such is the case in the Ministers Black Veil.

The Scarlet Letter: A romance published in 1850, a book of fiction in a historical setting, written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hawthorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. He includes tone, mood, and style into this story. While reading I questioned Nathaniel’s purpose for writing such a tragic tale of shame, deceit, and redemption. Hawthorne's purpose for writing The Scarlet Letter was so he could reveal the life and hypocrisy of the Puritan communities back in those days.

Hester Prynne, the woman that has been living as one of the biggest sinners in this town. Since the time that she had to carry with such an atrocious title, Hester has been humiliated, mentally harmed, and has slowly lost her own sanity. Now even though she has gone through so much, there is two things that have not changed and that is for one, she has not once weared the scarlet letter with shame, she wears it with pride and at the same time with the responsibility of showing the sin that she will not be able to run away from. Secondly, Hester never stays away from her daughter Pearl, the girl that brings her the consolation that she needs but also that reflects on the acts of her sin. It can obviously be seen that Hester most keep her daughter Pearl, she has gone through alot and her daughter is all she has left to accompany her and bring her peace.

Unbeknownst to the community of Boston, their favorite minister was actually Pearl’s father. Reverend Dimmesdale was a young and charismatic preacher who in the very beginning of the story asks Hester to reveal who Pearl’s real father is to the whole community. She refuses to give up the secret. From the beginning of the novel it is clear that Dimmesdale feels guilty for also being a part of Pearl’s creation and Hester’s punishment when he says, “I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer!” He clearly believes that the sin of adultery should be shared by the participants, but for a variety of reasons he does not come clean and instead internalizes his shame. Ironically Dimmesdale becomes an even better pastor as his guilt and shame deepens, his sermons are increasingly popular with his congregation. He openly proclaims to them that he is a sinner and that he has lied to them, but instead of being shocked they consider his proclamation of guilt to be an exaggeration for the sake of his sermon.

Arthur Dimmesdale, a minister, lives his life under the watchful yet admiring eye of the townspeople of Boston and, as a result, becomes a slave to the public opinion. His sin against Hester and Pearl is that he will

In “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne presents the consequences of sin as an important aspect in the lives of Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingsworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale. The sin committed, adultery, between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale had resulted in the birth of their innocent little girl, Pearl. This sin ruined the three main characters’ lives completely in different ways. With the sin committed, there were different ways the characters reacted to it: embracing the sin, concealing the sin, and becoming obsessed and consumed with it. With each reaction to the sin there were also different actions of redemption.

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