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,

““There was witchcraft in little Pearl’s eyes, and her face, as she glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smile which made its expression frequently so elvish.” (Hawthorne 145) This, is a misleading description that Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts of Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne, in his classic novel The Scarlet Letter. Pearl is the living product of sin for her mother. Born out of wedlock, Pearl is a unique child that tends to be very moody and unpredictable. However, Pearl, at such a young age, demonstrates outstanding knowledge and exhibits curiosity to her mother’s scarlet letter, and the hypocrisy of Puritan society. Although Pearl portrays devilish characteristics and performs mischievous behaviour, she

As great effect as emotions can have on someone, even greater is the effect of how one reacts to his emotions. Arguably the two most influential of these emotions are guilt and anger. They can drive a man to madness or encourage actions of vindication. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are subject to this very notion in Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter. Hester simply accepted that what she had done was wrong, whereas Dimmesdale, being a man of high regard, did not want to accept the reality of what he did. Similar to Hester and Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth allows his emotions to influence his life; however, his influence came as the result of his anger. Throughout the book, Hawthorne documents how Dimmesdale and Hester 's

Why is sin important? It is believed that sin is important to people because their deity places guilt on their wrongdoings to show that those actions are not to be repeated. In contrary to this belief, there are people with religious views that hold no importance with sin. Depending on the individual’s religious views, sin can be a conflict between oneself and a “higher” being or it can not affect the individual at all. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Dimmesdale is an ordained Puritan priest that had committed a grave sin in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He had committed adultery with a married woman, Hester, the woman that is married to Roger Chillingworth. After Chillingworth has heard about this news, he seeks

All of the major characters in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne are dynamic and go through some form of character development. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, who are at the forefront of the central conflict in the plot of the novel, are no exception. While their respective evolutions in character were noticeably different, each was emphasized by the three scaffold scenes. The differences of Hester and Dimmesdale’s respective character developments are highlighted and emphasized by the three scaffold scenes in the novel.

The novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, many of the main characters suffer from toils of sin. Especially Arthur Dimmesdale, the local puritan clergyman who has committed adultery and can 't admit to the people of the town in Boston what he has done. He lived under a strict society where the system and all of its components were based on God. He suffers from this because he values the Puritan way. Arthur Dimmesdale does not come out for many reasons and that isn 't right, which makes him a coward throughout the novel.

In the Scarlet Letter there are characters that are important to the novel; however there is one specific character that relates to the topic of the story is Arthur Dimmesdale. The character Arthur Dimmesdale is a respected minster in Boston. However even though, Arthur Dimmesdale is a minister and preaches against sin to his congregation, he commits the ultimate sin with a young married woman named Hester Pryne. For punishment Hester Pryne becomes pregnant and shunned from public society, Dimmesdale is forced to live with guilt and later in the novel dies from the same sin within his body. Critics that have read the Scarlet letter would argue that Dimmesdale is a weak or ennobled character because he didn’t tell the community of his sinful crime. Another characteristic that critics would agree on is that Dimmesdale was a hypocrite. Arthur Dimmesdale is a character that is weak and hypocritical to his own belief.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was quite progressive for his time and his novel, The Scarlet Letter, is a wonderful example of this. Before he married his wife, Sophia Peabody, Hawthorne joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist group (Nathaniel Hawthorne). According to Merriam Webster, transcendentalism is, “a philosophy that emphasizes the a priori conditions of knowledge and experience or the unknowable character of ultimate reality or that emphasizes the transcendent as the fundamental reality” (“Transcendentalism”). Put simply, transcendentalists thought that intuition and knowledge of ourselves is more a more important reality than the scientific, sensual reality. As a group, these people held very progressive views on women’s rights, education,

Nathaniel Hawthorne makes readers see Pearl as a symbol of what Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale’s actions were. She represented their affection and sentiment for each other. She was the literal outcome of what they were. Even though she was just a child, according to their society, she was full of sins because of what her parents did. An example to show that she was treated horribly was in chapter seven. Pearl is taunted by a group of Puritan children even though she was just on her way to the governor’s mansion. She did nothing wrong, yet she was treated like she was a criminal. However, she did not let the children get off easily. She retaliated by throwing mud at them. While doing this, she also proved how she is not scared to stand up for herself. This can be connected to how Hester’s scarlet letter ‘A’ later resembles the word ‘able’. Near the end of the book, Hester is looked upon by others because of her ability to help them.

In the Scarlet Letter Hester’s sin stood out the most in the eyes of the towns people adultery was a terrible sin. If one person has a “L” on them for liar and another person has a” M” for the murderer, in human perspective the guy with the M is the worst. It’s in human’s nature to compare and to Judge others. Some people use comparing to make them feel better about themselves. We are all a bunch of different sinners in the need of the same cross and the same God. To make wearing your sin better than what it is you can encouraging them by saying everything will be alright. If a person sees someone with the same sin as she, she can help others by showing she is not

During the 1850’s, in the New England colonies, Puritanism was the way of life. It was a religion that was based around God, and everything that people did was to please and respect him. Commiting a sin was the worst thing a person could do during this time. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, a young woman commits a sin and has to deal with the consequences of the harsh puritans. Hawthorne is able to incorporate many symbols throughout Chapter 7, The Governor's Hall, that allow the reader to understand the true nature of the Puritans.

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.

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

A young woman named Hester Prynne is found of adultery. She had an illegitimate child and now has to wear the letter "A" on her chest to represent adulterer. She has been sentences to three hours of scolded punishment and a lifetime of being branded. Reverend Wilson and reverend Dimmesdale question Hester about the child 's father. She refuses to give up the name. Her old husband Roger Chillingworth appears and gives her some medicine to help her. She bursts out that he might be the devil in disguise and assures her that he just wants to get revenge on the baby 's father. A few months later she is released from prison and is able to take care of herself and the baby from her talent as needlework. Pearl is Hester 's child and knows she is different from everyone else. There are rumors going around that Pearl is a demon child and should be taken away from Hester. She persuades Wilson by saying that she can teach pearl a lesson from her shame. He grants the order of letting pearl be with her mother. Chillingworth becomes a doctor and moves in with reverend Dimmesdale to find the cause of his health problems. Dimmesdale is getting worse and is seeing visions. He tortures himself because of his sin and whips himself. He goes to the scaffold and holds hands with Hester and Pearl. They return home and Dimmesdale does the sermon of his lifetime.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a prominent American literary author that was known for a writing manner that was developed through a style of romantic fiction with the representation of his own Puritan beliefs. Having been born during the Antebellum period of American history, Hawthorne’s work was known to have a relation to the aspects of antebellum social and economic life. This was a time period in which various social movements arouse in order to push the reformation and modernization of American society. For example, many of the most notable during this time were abolition, moral