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,

The third example of Dimmesdale is the worst sinner than Chillingworth is because he doesn’t have responsibility for what he has done. After Hester is out of prison, she is punished and she takes all the blame and their shared sin while Dimmesdale chooses to hide behind her. Dimmesdale let Hester and Pearl go through hash criticizing, disparaging, and insulting from everyone in the towns. People disparaging Hester by saying “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law

A reader may label Dimmesdale the purest of the sinners. Adultery, in the Christian world, is the one of the greatest sins a man can commit, second only to premeditated murder. In a Puritan society, it must be close to the same. Dimmesdale tries to purge himself of this evil sin by scourging and self-denial. However, he shies away from public confession, rationalizing the good he can instill in other men and women with his sermons. We find this illogical reasoning on page He endures Chillingworth's revenge and hatred while trying to preach what he doesn't practice. At his weakest point, Hester tempts him to cave in to the sin and do it all over again. Out of desperation to flee from the torture, he crumbles

price of death, proved to be more harmful and more destructive than this sin of the flesh, and his sin against God. Socrates said, “Knowthyself,” and Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true.” If Reverend Dimmesdale had been true to himself he certainly wouldn’t have suffered as much as he did. What drove Dimmesdale to hold in his self-condemning truth? To

Hawthorne develops Dimmesdale’s character to exemplify the destructive power of guilt, which Chillingworth’s vengeful nature furthers. Hawthorne shows both the destruction that guilt causes and the intensity of Chillingworth’s revenge through diction and setting.

Arthur Dimmesdale in the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most quickly judged characters. Many readers originally dislike the man who Hester cheated on her husband with. Questions arise from his absence in the beginning of the book of why he did not reveal himself or help Hester escape from Salem. When Arthur Dimmesdale is revealed as the man Hester had an affair with, readers may judge him as an evil man. As the book speaks about Arthur’s experience, Hawthorne makes his story so tragic that readers may pity Dimmesdale instead of hating him, based on the evidence that Dimmesdale is physically affected by his sin, how he is being tortured by Hester’s ex-husband, and how he wants to confess but is unable to.

Throughout history, one recurring theme has been the harsh judgement of society against those who stand out. Although in certain periods and different societies, public shaming seems to have been more severe, it is, in all actuality, equally cruel today, yet in different forms. Despite this, keeping one 's sins a secret and away from societal judgement seems to have more of a negative effect on oneself, often causing poor mental and physical health, than confessing and facing consequences. In The Scarlet Letter, author, Nathaniel Hawthorne explores how one is affected, both physically and mentally, when his/her appearance doesn 't match his/her reality through the main characters of the novel, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. In their 1600 's Puritan society, Hawthorne depicts the differences between Hester and Dimmesdale’s public versus private shaming for their committed sin of adultery, reflected through how both forms of ignominy affect their characters mental and physical health. Although Hester and Dimmesdale are the main characters that struggle with the difficulty of their appearance matching their reality, there are others that contribute to their conflicts. These characters are known as Pearl, Hester’s daughter who is being portrayed as “God’s messenger” to teach her to be her true self, and Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s long lost husband who torments Dimmesdale, also teaching him to be his true self by challenging him confess his sin throughout the novel. In

Throughout history, one recurring theme has been the harsh judgement of society against those who stand out. Although in certain periods and different societies, public shaming seems to have been more severe, it is, in all actuality, equally cruel today, yet in different forms. Despite this, keeping one 's sins a secret and away from societal judgement seems to have more of a negative effect on oneself, often causing poor mental and physical health, than confessing and facing consequences. In The Scarlet Letter, author, Nathaniel Hawthorne explores how one is affected, both physically and mentally, when his/her appearance doesn 't match his/her reality through the main characters of the novel, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. In their 1600 's Puritan society, Hawthorne depicts the differences between Hester and Dimmesdale’s public versus private shaming for their committed sin of adultery, reflected through how both forms of ignominy affect their characters mental and physical health. Although Hester and Dimmesdale are the main characters that struggle with the difficulty of their appearance matching their reality, there are others that contribute to their conflicts. These characters are known as Pearl, Hester’s daughter who is being portrayed as “God’s messenger” to teach her to be her true self, and Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s long lost husband who torments Dimmesdale, also teaching him to be his true self by challenging him confess his sin throughout the novel. In

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.

As far as I am concerned, the society of the 1850 was very religious; many people of that period were believers. Thus, there were many issues happened that influenced Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing style. In that society, the religions was strict, the people were judgmental. The situation was different, thus people’s mind was also thinking in different ways.

Employing his profession as the medical adviser, he attended the sick reverend, Dimmesdale; as he performed, he “scrutinized his patient carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to him.”(Hawthorne 102). Chillingworth finally detects Dimmesdale as the adulterer, which led him to drastic change from treating his patient to getting closer to him and tormenting the poor man. For instance, Chillingworth probes and tortures Dimmesdale like a science experiment; instead of using his skills as a physician, he deconstructs Dimmesdale. By this time, “he now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart” with every amount of force, he had within him. (Hawthorne 153). The readers can depict the evolution of Roger Chillingworth’s obsession with the torturing Dimmesdale, as it changes his normality into insanity as well as the

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a book driven by passion. Passion is the catalyst for the plot and is what drives the plot forward. Hester is motivated by her passionate love for Dimmesdale to commit the sin that begins the story, and passionate hate for the same man causes Chillingworth to begin his campaign of revenge. Throughout the book, those emotions push them to act the way they do. Their expression of their passion is similar, and they are both affected in the same way by Dimmesdale’s death. While Hester’s passion is rooted in love and Chillingworth’s in hate, their feelings for Dimmesdale are essentially the same.

Some two hundred years following the course of events in the infamous and rigid Puritan Massachusetts Colony in the 1600s, Nathaniel Hawthorne, descendant of a Puritan magistrate, in the 19th century, published The Scarlet Letter. Wherein such work, Hawthorne offered a social critique against 17th Massachusetts through the use of complex and dynamic characters and literary Romanticism to shed light on said society’s inherent contradiction to natural order and natural law.

To make a decision, one weighs the benefits and the downfalls, and concludes by judging the factors of each alternative. One's choice of whether to conform to society's demands or submit to personal impulses is difficult, especially under strenuous circumstances. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is a profound romance in which the characters must make such a decision. A reconciliation of the two forces is not seemingly feasible. Reliance of self consumes Hester Prynne, while denial of self engrosses her partner in the crime of adultery, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. The roles of Hester's daughter, Pearl, and her estranged husband, Roger Chillingworth, as individual beings are less evident than that of their impact on Hester and

When Chillingworth enters town, Dimmesdale’s reputation begins to change because the people believe that Dimmesdale is associating with the ‘black man’- Chillingworth. The community has seen that Dimmesdale’s association with Chillingworth has had a negative impact, and that causes his reputation to suffer. From the point in time when Chillingworth entered the town, the people have seen Dimmesdale become thinner and more nervous and darkness consume Chillingworth, leading to this change in reputation. Dimmesdale has also started holding his hand over his heart frequently, leading to the communal belief that the A was having more of an effect, especially through its effect on Chillingworth and Dimmesdale: “To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan’s emissary, in the guide of old Roger Chillingworth” (112). By the end of the novel, Dimmesdale’s reputation was at it’s lowest point due to the revelation that he was Hester’s co-adulterer. The people were shocked when this was revealed, as “the multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit” (222). The conclusion to the novel discussed the repercussions of Dimmesdale’s