Summary Of ' The Scarlet Letter '

Hester Prynne's guilt is the result of her committing adultery, which has a significant effect on her life. Hester is publicly seen with the scarlet letter when she first emerges out of the cold

In the novel The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, all of the characters possess specific traits of the seven deadly sins which are lust, gluttony, greed, pride, wrath, envy and sloth. My character Roger Chillingworth possesses the sins, greed, wrath and pride. I will attempt to make a connection between the sins committed by Chillingworth and his motivation behind those sins and sins committed by people in our world today. For example, one could compare wrath to the destructive and horrible feats of today’s murders that feel they have been treated unjustly, therefore, take the lives of those they feel have wronged them. Another comparison is the effects that pride can have on today’s role models such as professional athletes and the result of greed on some of today’s entertainers who need more and more stuff, such as cars, homes, jewels and the list goes on and on.

1. As the story opens a throng is gathered.  Who are these people?  Where and why are they gathered?

The characters in the Scarlet Letter are judged greatly through how and who they are able and unable to forgive. Such as the main female lead, Hester Prynne, and her struggle for the town to forgive her, finding the will to forgive herself and having God forgive her. Although, this was hard because every day she had to live with the scarlet letter upon her chest as a reminder of her sin. Another character that had one of the roughest times in the novel was Arthur Dimmesdale. This man kept a sin hidden for most of the novel and let it eat him away. The person that Dimmesdale needed to forgivehim the most was Pearl. He spent most of the novel trying to earn her beloved trust. Pearl would ask him favors to go into town with her but it

It is in this part of the chapter that Hester says she has wronged him, and Chillingworth goes on to say that it was he who had wronged her first, having taken away her youth to lie with his decaying, old self. This is all to make Hester feel guiltier about having done what she did, and this guilt-trip is only the beginning of Chillingworth’s revenge.

Hester said things to her like “Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!” , “Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?”. Furthermore to Pearls presence and being a social outcast, she also would sometimes question Hester, who her father his and also about the A on Hester’s

Chapter 12: Standing upon the scaffold, Hester and Pearl join Dimmesdale. Their connection forms an electric feeling. Pearl understands a lot more of the man than she leads Hester to believe. Through the imagery created by Dimmesdale’s self agony, it is felt that his own problem is not just clouding his understanding of himself but of others as well. Not being able to express his problems and come to terms with his actions, he is unable to understand the honest reality of others. This deters his ability to be the revolutionary minister he is thought of to be.

Therefore, Hester is bored and sad because of the man she is married to is giving no sign of life. So to compensate this lack of man, she decides to have sex with a priest, which is really bad in this society. But instead of leaving the city like most would do, she stays in the city where all started, and she acknowledges it, because she is kind of proud and is not ashamed. Never has she revealed the name her Pearl’s father, because she is courageous and has pride.

Hester’s sin and her recovery from her sin exemplify the morals in The Scarlet Letter. At the beginning of the novel, she commits adultery and is publicly shunned for it. The townspeople, who represent society as a whole in the novel, consider Hester to be a “brazen hussy,” and treat her accordingly (41). They also consider her “fantastically embroidered” letter to be “ignominious” and a symbol of Hester’s “disgrace” (41, 42). By wearing the letter, Hester feels the wrath of the townspeople. During her walk to the scaffold, Hester feels “ an agony from every footstep,” and “as if her heart had been flung into the street for them [the townspeople] all to spurn and trample upon.” (41) The scarlet letter throws Hester into anguish and despair; however, her public suffering eventually leads to her survival. As the novel

Even though Pearl is a symbol of sin and shame, she is a symbol of treasure too, which is different from other kids in her age. She is also unique in reminding Hester for her adultery and in representing Hester’s feeling of ostracism from the society. We can see that Pearl has two opposite meanings, sin and

Hester then returned to her cell and Roger Chillingworth was brought into the cell to attempt to calm her and Pearl down. Chillingworth then proceeded to send the jailer on his way, and demanded that Hester tell him who the father was. She refused. Since Hester knew that Chillingworth was her long lost husband, Chillingworth insisted that Hester never reveal that they were married. Chillingworth said that if Hester does, he would ruin the real fathers life. Hester agreed reluctantly fearing that she may come to regret her decision.

In the stories of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the antagonist characters display parallel story lines through their searches for the enemy. Roger Chillingworth, the former husband of Hester Prynne and the antagonist of The Scarlet Letter, works against his wife in order to find her untold second lover. Frankenstein is a contrasting story in which an unnamed monster is the antagonist towards his human creator, Dr. Frankenstein. Yet despite quite different story lines, the two characters possess traits that exibit parallels between them. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth displays the startling passionate characteristics of an unwavering drive to seek out his foe, madness as his focus on his search takes over his entire being, and terrible anguish when his task is unexpectedly over, all of which are reflected in the daemon created at the hand of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein.

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.” (23)-Nameless narrator’s narration

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale is a young clergyman who commits adultery with a young married woman who is in his congregation. It is believed that her husband is deceased and perhaps that is part of how they justify their sin. He speaks abjectly on the scaffold, but hidden in his words is a plea for Hester, his partner in sin, to expose him in his share of the guilt. As the years pass, he fights to confess it himself, but all the while, he fears being realized. Arthur Dimmesdale is a well-esteemed reverend who decays inside as he hides his sin until his physical decay, caused by his internal decay, brings him to death.

The Scarlet Letter Critical Analysis Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, the direct descendant of John Hawthorne, and a judge at the infamous Salemwitchcraft trials. The guilt that Hawthorne felt over the actions of his ancestor had an enormous impact on his writings. In his introduction of "The Scarlet Letter", Hawthorne accepts the guilt from his forefathers and offers to repent for their crimes (Waggoner, 5). This unusual way of viewing guilt and sin is one driving factor in Hawthorne's writing. The other, which is closely related to the first, is the relationship between men, and of man to humanity as a whole.