The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

The children In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter play a major role in the Puritan society. With their honest opinions of Hester and Pearl, the children are presented as more perceptive and more honest than adults. Due to their innocence, children are capable of expressing themselves without constraints; there are no laws or regulations that they are bounded by. As an adolescent go through the stages of life and grow older, they begin to be more conscious of the how they act as they are more aware of society and the things that are occurring in the world, creating a filter for their actions. When they remain as the children, on the other hand, are adventurous; they are still exploring the universe that seems to fill with mysteries that are bound to be solved. They tend to attach to the truth and they are not afraid to speak it freely. Children differ from adults in their potential for expressing these perceptions. With their obliviousness to the things that are actually going on around the town, children therefore react differently compared to the adults, who are more knowledgeable. Perceived to be immature, young children are presented as more perceptive and more honest than adults due to their innocence, how they are unaware of the reality and the crimes that are presented in society by the adults enables them to be blithe and not afraid of saying what they feel like. Due to their naivety, when they express what they perceive to be true, they do not get punished,

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne summarizes Hester Prynne’s perspective of the forest in one phrase. Early in the book, as Hester leaves prison, Hawthorne describes the forest as “dark, inscrutable… open to [Hester], where the wilderness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her” (75). Hawthorne explains Hester’s connection to the evil, isolated, and free forest, which serves as the location for her conversations with Pearl, Dimmesdale, and Chillingsworth. In contrast to Puritan society, Hester Prynne not only identifies with the sinful nature of the forest, but also finds its isolation and freedom liberating.

The clockwork of Nature does not stop for any Man. In the classic novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Dimmesdale conceals an abominable truth. Avoiding subjugation to the conservative Puritan's Society rule, the reverend feigned obliviousness all the while Hester, the person he committed adultery with, fearlessly bared her shame upon her bosom. The society held Dimmesdale to a higher standard; as a result, their influences hindered his ability to take responsibility for his actions. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne manipulates complementary diction, parallel juxtapositions, guilt-ridden indirect characterizations, and enlightening dialogues to interpret how the society symbolized the prison bars cemented by incarceration, cannot bring to naught the natural order of humanity.

Hester may seem like an ordinary sinner, but once the symbols are devoured, Hester is much more complex. As seen in the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, symbols provide underlying messages to the reader, to help learn more about characters and plot. In the novel, the three main characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth, are struggling the battle of sin and the consequences that come about. In the Puritan society, there are many religious references and concepts. While Hester is judged by the society for her sin, others in her life are affected by it also. The book opens up with Hester standing on the scaffold, where she is made a shame. Through the book, Hester 's life is dug into deeper, as the reader finds out who she truly is and who the people around her have become. The symbols in the book are necessary to understanding the underlying themes of the text. Throughout the book, the most important symbols to understand are, nature and the black man, Dimmesdale 's mark and scarlet letter, and Pearl.

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, narrates the events of young adulteress Hester Prynne and her secret lover Arthur Dimmesdale – telling a story of lust, guilt, and betrayal. Despite her affair being more passionate than her legal marriage to Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s sinful act ends with a pregnancy which results in disastrous consequences. She is thrown into a crowd of ravenous puritans, vying to save themselves from eternal damnation, and is forced to endure the harsh hypocritical criticism of her peers. Through this emotional pain and suffering Hester raises her child, Pearl, to the best of her abilities, only to be surprised when she ends up as wild and free as the act that conceived her. Pearl’s untamed character is

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the “A” is much more than a tattered patch of crimson with loose gold stitchery. As the years pass, the Puritanical society associates Hester Prynne’s identity with the embattled patch from an “adulteress,” to a woman who’s “able,” and finally, into an “angel.” Hester is a fallen woman in the beginning as she is publically shamed and shunned, causing her to suffer greatly. She internally struggles to comprehend the letter’s symbolic meaning only to come out as a stronger woman in the end. “Symbols are a means of complex communication that often can have multiple levels of meaning.”(Womack, P125) Hester gains a unique understanding of humanity and the struggles of other

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 is a dark romanticism. The novel was written about two main characters Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale and their forbidden love. Hester and Dimmesdale have committed sin by having an affair, which leads to the conflicts in the story. The affair it self-was forbidden because Hester was a married woman and Arthur was a minister. Is the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale true love? What is true love anyways? There are many ways that these questions can be answered, but one thing is for sure this story line is complicated in many ways.

In the beginning of the Bible, Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The story of Adam and Eve has been recalled in The Scarlet Letter because of the sinful acts Arthur and Hester commit, which lead to expulsion and suffering. Even though Hester Prynne is the main protagonist in the novel, she does not change much; however, we see Arthur change in various ways. It is through Dimmesdale’s suffering that Hawthorne illustrates his theme, namely the idea that though forbidden knowledge can bring suffering, exposing others to that same knowledge can bring redemption.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is book filled with complex themes and ideas. The author creates complex characters full of morbidity to carry out the plot. The main characters, Hester Prynne, and her husband Roger Chillingworth, are a prime example of morbid character’s from their gloomy aura, to their melancholy demeanor. Due to Hester’s misfortune and sin, she’s lost her beauty, and in a sense her happiness. This is the same reason Chillingworth has become obsessive in trying to find Hester 's lover and has planned “to see him tremble.”(pg.70)

The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne used the light of daytime and the darkness of night in The Scarlet Letter to get his point across to the readers. He used darkness and shadows to symbolize sin, death, hatred, fear, evilness and secrets and he used light to symbolise God, goodness, acceptance, honesty, the ability to adapt to surroundings and to survive in peace and harmony even in the harsh light of life. His use of these symbols helped the reader to gain a mental picture of the situations and the feelings that occurred in the story. The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, which was a Puritan settlement at that time. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and a piece of fabric with a scarlet letter '93A '94 on her breast. The day is dark and gloomy, like the situation that she is in. Hester is described coming out of the prison "like a black shadow emerging into sunshine" this shows that Hester is clothed in the darkness of her shame but still she walks into the sun under the glaring eyes of society while waiting to be punished. There is a quiet elderly onlooker in the crowd who is told that

People are constantly changing. They are constantly using their past mistakes to make for themselves a better future. Life is a constant process of living and learning. This is what author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, has the character Hester Prynne do in his novel The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne, the main protagonist, causes great havoc in her society for committing adultery. The novel tells the story of Hester and how she is shut out from her world for what she has done, and exemplifies the affect of her sin on those around her and those closest to her. These people including Reverend Dimmesdale who dissipates from his own guilt, Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband who was assumed to be dead, who becomes a very vengeful and spiteful man, and also her own daughter Pearl who is an outcast of the children because she is a child of sin. Hester’s development throughout the novel is truly remarkable as are the effects other characters have on her. She grows from being ashamed and defiant to at peace with herself and her sin while remaining the same protective mother of her daughter, Pearl. She becomes confident and free, not letting the Puritan society control or define her.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, takes place in June of 1642 of the Puritan town of Boston, Massachusetts. Hester Prynne, the protagonist, is married to Roger Chillingworth. They decided to leave Europe to have a new life in Boston; unexpectedly her husband failed to join her. After two years waiting for her husband’s return, she engages a personal relationship with Arthur Dimmesdale which causes an improper affair, and she gives birth to a baby girl named Pearl. When living in a Puritan society they forced Hester to wear the letter “A” as punishment; which stands for “adulterer”. Also for another act of punishment, the community made Hester stand on a scaffold platform for three hours for public shaming. To her surprise she recognizes a person in the crowd; her husband. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne demonstrates the theme of guilt through the characters of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, but also the relationships between Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth.

When this book was given out, many people probably could not wait for it to be over. Friends, parents, even teachers talked about how hard it is to get through. In fact, the majority of people, including myself, wondered how teenagers living in the 21st century could possibly connect to this story. The typical teenager’s daily life revolves around getting lunch at Panera, studying for many tests in one day, and competing for the most amount of likes on Instagram. So how could a book about a girl who commits adultery and is ridiculed by her whole community for her actions possibly be related to? Believe it or not, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne has many themes that are still portrayed in today’s modern society. Some of these themes include acceptance within society, reputation based on previous actions, and how closely related revenge and guilt are to one another.

Symbols are one of the many literary devices authors use to convey deeper meanings and context to the story. Similarly, an artist will use symbols in his or her art to portray a story that can be interpreted in different ways. Often times, books will have cover art done by an artist whom has read the book to bring the book’s meanings and themes into one picture. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book, The Scarlet Letter, has acquired many different renditions of the cover over the years from different artists. In his story, a young Puritan, Hester Prynne, is sentenced to a punishment of the scarlet letter after she has committed adultery with an unnamed man. Hawthorne’s narrative is filled with in depth characters, symbolism, and themes of revenge, sin, forgiveness and secrecy. By using important symbols, characters, themes from the book, the artists of each cover art for The Scarlet Letter clearly represents Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was born in Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1804. His ancestors include John Hathorne, who was the only judge who was involved in the Salem witch trials that never did apologize for his actions. So, Hawthorne, added a "w" to make his ancestral name in order to hide this relation. He attempted many novels; However, The Scarlet Letter was, by far, the most successful. The Scarlet Letter is an engaging and decisive work defined by Hawthorne’s use of symbolism. He used the symbols often throughout the book to create different themes. One of the key themes is that the definition of good and evil are subject to the varying viewpoints of certain people or groups of people and this is clear through the use of multiple symbols and characters.