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

To start the book, we find that a young woman has committed adultery and when standing in front of a mocking crowd, she is ashamed of her actions. Continuing through the book we find that the adulteress, Hester Prynne, displays many examples of positive outcomes arising from negative situations. She becomes more and more aware of the faults of society and becomes wiser as she deals with the consequences of her actions. Even though Hester made a terrible decision that came with many extremely negative effects, she gained personality traits, perceptions, and people that rose from her mistake.

Surveillance can be considered the act of being watched under a close eye and can have either a positive or negative effect on a person. Some individuals feel more at ease knowing that someone is always there watching which is to create a supposedly safe environment. Others feel pressure from society or their peers to live up to their respected positions and morals of the society, much like Dimmesdale, which causes extreme paranoia. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dimmesdale is an example that demonstrates negative effects that surveillance can have on a person. In the romance, Dimmesdale is faced with both his own surveillance and Chillingworth’s surveillance. However, Dimmesdale’s own scrutiny causes more damage to himself than Chillingworth’s does.

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 composes Pearl as a powerful character even though she is not the main one. Her actions not only represent what she is as a person, but what other characters are and what their actions are. Hawthorne makes Pearl the character that helps readers understand what the other characters are. She fits perfectly into every scene she is mentioned in because of the way her identity and personality is. Pearl grows throughout the book, which in the end, help the readers better understand what the significance of The Scarlet Letter is.

John Muir, pioneer of American conservationism, declared that “The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness” (Muir 313). For many modern Americans, the forest is a place of freedom, peace, and introspection. However, until the last century, the wilderness was often regarded with fear and resentment. Written long before John Muir and the conservation movement, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was well ahead of its time for its depiction of wilderness. In The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale leaves the beaten path and seeks refuge in the forest. There, he gains the strength and willpower to throw off seven years of hopelessness and take his fate into his own hands. Although the Puritans view the forest as a place of wild paganism, the forest symbolizes moral agency because it opens opportunity, transforms the characters into active agents, and asserts justice.

The spark flickers, then dies out, borne on lofty winds to extinction. The rocks strike again, and a flame leaps into the craggy logs, illuminating the faces of humanity’s ancestors. Humans have always changed, through the evolution of species, thoughts, and ideas. A significant change was wrought by the new immigrants to America, and as they settled in the budding New World. In many pieces of literature from this period, the change in American culture was reflected through the words of authors, often leaving clandestine clues to the nature of American society. Throughout the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the emergence of a new American belief system was represented by three of the main characters. Pearl, who was capricious and tempestuous, was synonymous with the flighty nature of immigrants to the new land. Dimmesdale, who demonstrated the trials of salvaging purity, showed the changing nature of religion, and Hester, the ever prideful, represented the struggles of governance within America. Hester’s little Pearl, born of sin and temptation, is representative of the hopeful immigrants into America. Though none of them knew it, their spirit and opportunities would lead them to defy authority and mark their own destinies, just as the young, impish child would grow to walk her own path towards choice. Hester, the mother of Pearl, is the ever watchful sentry. Her assimilation to the government and authority is blatant, as she tries to rein in a fleeting daughter, and

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 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main characters of this book are Reverend Author Dimmesdale, Pearl, Roger Chillingworth, Governor Bellingham, Mistress Hibbins, John Wilson, and Hester Prynne. The setting of this book is mid 17th century New England, Boston, Massachusetts, Bay Colony.

The inner workings of human nature are evident through the centuries of conflict between people: differences in opinion with an implausible mortality rate. The Civil War, one of the greatest dissensions in the United States’ history, was ultimately based on the Confederacy’s desire to have institutionalized superiority over African Americans, demonstrated by the humiliation and degradation of slaves. The Union’s challenge to this colossal racial injustice was taken by the South as an assault to their pride and entitlement to power, sparking a war that vastly altered the history of the United States. This concept dates much further back than the Civil War, demonstrated by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s profound novel, The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne’s infamous affair brought about the punishment that essentially led to a redistribution of power in the Puritan town. Though Hester was the only known perpetrator, the punishment given to her by the close-minded townspeople was not the only instance. Dimmesdale’s weakness was primarily brought on by both himself and his unusual residence with Roger Chillingworth. Punishment ultimately induces the demise of one of the rivals involved.