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 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, symbolsim is constantly present in the actual scarlet letter “A” as it is viewed as a symbol of sin and the gradally changes its meanign, guilt is also a mejore symbol, and Pearl’s role in this novel is symbolic as well. The Scarlet Letter includes many profound and crucial symbols. these devices of symbolism are best portayed in the novel, most noticably through the letter “A” best exemplifies the changes in the symbolic meaning throughout the novel.

““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

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.

A child stealing candy from the bowl when she knows she isn’t supposed to; a drug addict coming forward to admit he has a terrible plight; a student cheating on their final exam after choosing not to study; a young girl admitting to pushing another child down on the playground; a husband cheating on his wife. Some stories of these subjects are known by all, able to heal and move forward with a clear conscience, while others are sheltered within them, left to fester and grow in destructiveness. All of these examples portray a subject either bound, or given peace by the truth of something depending on whether it is concealed or uncovered. The power and significance of exposed/hidden truth is something utilized in writing all the time when an

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,

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is often renowned as his best work. The novel tells about the rigid ideas of 19th century Puritan New England through the story of Hester Prynne, Minister Dimmesdale, and Pearl. Hawthorne points out that the Puritans are often more ready to judge, punish, and damn someone than to forgive them. He is very critical of this idea, and goes against it by ending the novel with Hester Prynne becoming a respected individual that other women often look to for advice, and by changing the perception many people have of the Scarlet Letter from, “Adultery” to “Able”. Throughout the novel Hawthorne refutes the harsh ideals of the Puritans through the

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne was set during the 1600s in a New England town during what is now known as the Puritan past of America. In the novel, the Puritan religion was not only observed but criticized as well. During this time, the Puritans were an extremely religious group of Protestants that were known for their intolerance of other religions and their strict guidelines for a righteous lifestyle that often lead to violence or cruel forms of punishment. Nathaniel Hawthorne is a perfect portrayal of a Puritan historian because he himself was born as a Puritan and witnessed first-hand the extreme pressures associated with the Puritan religion to include arguments about the Puritan society and the treatment endured within the religion. Although The Scarlet Letter was set in the 1600s, the novel was written in the 1840s and dealt with issues during the Antebellum Era specifically when it came to the Women’s Movement and the Second Great Awakening.

     Throughout the novel The Scarlet Letter there are many symbols. One of the biggest symbols of the novel is the scarlet letter A that Hester Prynne is sentenced to wear after she commits adultery. It is a symbol that is sewn onto her clothes for everyone to see. It is a punishment that is meant to humiliate her for the duration of the time that she stays in Puritanical Boston. During the novel, the scarlet letter changes and evolves from meaning adultery to meaning ability and even physically changes its form.

Symbolism has many different meanings, and the Scarlet ‘A’ in “The Scarlet Letter” has many different meanings as well. Hester Prynne is the main character who is forced to wear the scarlet letter as remembrance for the crime and the sin that she has committed. This letter completely ruined her reputation in her community. How could a small piece of fabric do so much harm? This letter was a representation of something much greater than the letter ‘A’. This letter was originally made to stand for adulteress, as physical reminder of her sins. The vibrant scarlet red is meant to shame Hester, to make her feel sorry for her mistakes. Most importantly it was a symbol for change and an emblem of identity. In short, the scarlet letter meant much more than a letter of shame, it was simply a piece of fabric with meaning that could easily change.