The Benefits of Sin Revealed in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Hester's ultimate consequence of sin is her daughter Pearl. With Pearl, Hester has to assume full responsibility because she is raising a child of her own. Hester loves Pearl because she is her

As Hester stands on the scaffold, seemingly tall and proud, the Puritan women viciously comment on her punishment: “‘The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch...At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead...But she --the naughty baggage-- little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown!’” (46). Without fully understanding the complete nature of her sin, the Puritans have classifed Hester’s adultery as an unforgivable transgression according to their principles when it was actually a passionate act of love. The dismissive diction of “little will care” the Puritan women as self-righteous and haughty, oblivious to the suffering and pain of Hester and the ignominy that she must endure for the rest of her life. They are merciless in their desire for penance; empathy, a redeeming quality of human beings, is absent in the minds of the Puritans because they follow such rigid rules. With their lack of empathy and their intolerance for human error, the Puritans are blindly fixated on Hester’s punishment. Furthermore, in Governor Bellingham’s house, Pearl points to a mirror where Hester sees “the scarlet letter...in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance” (95). This distorted diction of “exaggerated” and “gigantic

In essence, there were three main sins committed in The Scarlet Letter, the sins of Hester, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. Roger Chillingworth committed the greatest sin because he let himself be ruled by hatred and the consuming desire for vengeance.  The overpowering vengeance and hatred felt by Chillingworth caused his life to be centered on demeaning Dimmesdale and tormenting him until the end of time.  Both Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale committed sins for which they were deeply remorseful, Roger Chillingworth, however, committed the greater sin because he felt no guilt.

First, Hester’s daughter Pearl is portrayed as representative of Hester’s sin in the flesh, or the truth of what she’s done walking around for all to see. She rings of the truth while also being Hester’s sole treasure in life. In the early stages of the novel, the moment in which Hester explains to the men at Governor Bellingham’s mansion that she must be allowed to keep Pearl as she says “‘[God] gave her in requital of all things else, which he had taken from me. She is my happiness!–she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and o endowed with a million-fold power of retribution for my sin?’” (p.103), providing a very clear representation of what Pearl is to Hester, and what she represents in her life. She is the truth of the scarlet letter in flesh and blood, and her mother’s torture, reminding her of the sin in which she has partaken. This shows Hester’s feelings of living with the truth: it helps her and teaches her much about life while

As Billy Wilder first stated in 1958, “nobody’s perfect:” throughout life everyone commits immoral actions that they wish they could undo. And although many would rather pretend they never committed an awful sin or run away from the consequences, people must let the mistake change their identity and fully accept the reality of their actions in order to completely move past it. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s historical novel, The Scarlet Letter, he reveals that only after incorporating a sin into their identity, can people truly move on.

#1. The sin of Hester was her commitment of adultery. This is the reason of the scarlet letter on her clothing. She takes all the punishment that is given to her for her crime and does not falter with what is right from wrong. Although all of the townspeople know of her crime, she refuses to tell with whom she committed the crime with and who she has hurt in the process. She does not talk about Chillingworth, her actual husband, or Dimmesdale, her true love. This affects not only her, but also her daughter, Pearl. Pearl does not understand the concept of the scarlet letter and she is very straightforward with her mother. Hester's sin affect how she lives her life for much of her life. She had to live being scrutinized by society. She didn’t

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

Sin can result in punishment or can be seen as an advantage of self-development. Hester Prynne uses her punishment of committing adultery to her advantage, leading to her powerful role in the novel. Hester is first viewed as a disgrace due to the Puritan beliefs of remaining faithful. However, throughout the novel, Hester begins to overcome her sin in which she doesn’t let society control how she is viewed. Instead of looking down on her, there was “an instinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality” (50). Usually, women didn’t have the courage to stand up for them self during the Puritan times. However, Hester continuing to wear the scarlet letter A suggests that she can own up to her sin as well as be proud of it. Hester “knew that her deed had been evil;

The townspeople thinks she is a demon child due to her constant outbursts. Hester’s punishment for adultery is to wear a scarlet letter upon her chest as a mark of shame. Similar to the actual scarlet letter, Pearl punishes Hester by physically reminding her of what she has done. She is often referred to as the living embodiment of her parents’ sin. Hester cries out to the town leaders in an act of maintaining custody of her daughter, “God gave me the child! . . .

“You are free to make whatever choice you want, but you are not free from the consequences of the choice” (Benson). In the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne shows that Hester makes a lot of choices, but she is not free from the consequences of those choices. Pearl is a result of her choice to commit adultery, so Pearl represents many things. Sometimes dealing with Pearl is a continuous struggle for Hester, since in her eyes Pearl is a difficult child. Pearl in some ways represents Hester’s sin, and in others ways shows how the consequences of her choices help Hester to realize to make wiser and better choices.

It is human nature to save ourselves and those we love in the event of a tragedy. However, traumatic experiences can leave us in ruin as trust is evaporated and suspicion takes over. The Puritan society is portrayed as a delicate façade of purity behind hidden secrets. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter illustrates the power of sin and its ability to lead the innocent into darkness. This powerful force results in obsessive behavior that is demonstrated in the destructive chain reaction between Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. The connection of guilty consciences holds them together, rather than their sins. Their interactions allow the fragmentation of their spirits until only anger and loss take over. The desire to remove guilt

Through out the course of history, those who were considered sinners were often out casted from the society. This is much the case with Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. After a public trial, Hester is considered a sinner due to her birthing of a so called “devil child”. Hester is convicted to the life long bearing of a scarlet letter on her chest. The Scarlet Letter that Hester Prynne wears symbolizes the change in perception of sin through out the novel. Due to the revelations of the governor Winthrop and the reverend Dimmesdale, the way sin is perceived changes from one of shame to the idea that every one is a sinner in their own right.

Hester’s battle with herself can only be understood by taking a glimpse into her daily life with her beloved daughter, Pearl. Pearl is the physical manifestation of her sin, of the adultery that Hester committed with her secret lover; with every waking hour, Pearl is always alongside Hester, constantly reminding Hester of her transgression. Whenever Hester sees Pearl, she sees a young and energetic girl, who also possesses the same attributes that she loathes about herself, the difficult and wild side of herself that would never give up. Hawthorne writes that Pearl, “lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. [Pearl] could not be made amenable to rules” (Hawthorne

“He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it, is a saint; that boasteth of it, is a devil” (Thomas Fuller). Every human being who has lived has sinned. As such, sin cannot be judged or punished merely for the act. Rather, other considerations should be taken into account. Sin is a universal concept of imperfect behavior independent of religious affiliation and is practiced universally. The range of acts and thoughts covered by sin is vast; Hawthorne critically explores the strict, inflexible Puritanical approach to sin and its implication for individuals and society. Hawthorne investigates the intent behind sin in The Scarlet Letter using Dimmesdale and Chillingworth in order to criticize the Puritan Code and to demonstrate

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.