Theme Of Self Identity And Love In The Scarlet Letter

In the novel The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth face the burden of making paramount decisions. Each character chooses to make bold choices with substantial effects which determine how the story plays out. First, Hester chooses to not expose Pearl’s father. Second, Dimmesdale refrains from revealing himself. Lastly, Chillingworth chooses to hide his true identity as Hester’s husband. The end results of the antecedent decisions influence the shape and structure of the novel.

In the book The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dimmesdale gets sicker and sicker the longer he holds in his secret sin of Adultery. It takes place in a Puritan society, which was a strict, conservative, and simple group in Boston Massachusetts. The book focuses on the sin of Hester Pryne committing adultery and having a child, Pearl, with a man other than her husband, Chillingworth. Hester gets shamed and laughed at on the scaffold used for public humiliation. The vulnerable and weakening Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale comes closer to confessing to being Pearl’s father throughout the three scaffold scenes. “Sin as sickness” is a major theme in the book that is represented through Reverend Dimmesdale’s internal conflict. The more Dimmesdale

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays Arthur Dimmesdale as a troubled individual. In him lies the central conflict of the book. Dimmesdale's soul is torn between two opposing forces: his heart, his love for freedom and his passion for Hester Prynne, and his head, his knowledge of Puritanism and its denial of fleshly love. He has committed the sin of adultery but cannot seek divine forgiveness, believing as the Puritans did that sinners received no grace. His dilemma, his struggle to cope with sin, manifests itself in the three scaffold scenes depicted in The Scarlet Letter. These scenes form a progression through which Dimmesdale at first denies, then accepts reluctantly, and finally conquers his sin.

Dimmesdale who is one of the main character in the Scarlet letter by Nathaniel hawthorne, appeared to be sick and haved sinned. Dimmesdale and hester prynne both have commit the sin adultery. Hester was punished but Dimmesdale had hid his sin for only Hester knew until her husband came and found out.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a Romantic novel about two adulterers, Hester and Dimmesdale, who are forced to live with the repercussions of their sin. Hester Prynne is punished by wearing a scarlet ‘A’ which ostracizes her from Puritan Boston, leading to several years of solitude. During this time, Roger Chillingworth, her vengeful husband, preys on Dimmesdale, whose only source of repent is in his hypocritical preachings. When Dimmesdale finally speaks to Hester again, they plan to escape their wrongdoings by fleeing back to England, where they can live together as a loving family with their daughter Pearl. Although some may argue that Hester and Dimmesdale are in love, a closer examination of the novel shows that they are

He continually makes excuses to justify his wrongdoings and compares himself to others. He explains to Hester “We are not… the worst sinner in the world. May God forgive us both! There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man’s revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated… the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!” (TSL 176). He sees the wrong in Chillingworth’s heart and turns to criticizing that rather than taking ownership over his own life. He sees the relatively worse intent of another as justification for his faults, even though he knows, on some level, that he is still in the wrong. Eventually, however, Dimmesdale recognizes that the reason for his anguish is his secrecy, so he decides to admit his secret to his fellow townspeople. Dimmesdale ultimately reveals “I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood; here, with this woman ... Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! ... But there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!” (Hawthorne, TSL 227). He cannot live with the guilt of lying to others about his equal culpability as Hester. Dimmesdale knows that the only means to find peace is to be completely

Guilt and shame represent two of the major consequences that come from sin. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter shows the plight of a Puritan woman named Hester Prynne who has committed adultery. The Scarlet Letter gives insight into the journey of Hester as she and other characters battle with their shame and guilt resulting from the sin of adultery. Throughout the Scarlet Letter the reader does not know who the father of Pearl, the result of the adulterous relationship, could possibly be. It is later discovered that the town minister, Dimmesdale, is the father of Pearl. In the conclusion of the book Dimmesdale dies but not before he can confess his sin to the town upon the scaffold where Hester faced her initial punishment. During the whole of the book

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the harshness of society and its impact on a member of the community who has done wrong. Hester Prynne was a young, beautiful, and married woman whose husband was over seas when she got pregnant. Accused with the crime of adultery, Hester has to deal with being shunned by her Puritan community. Refusing to give up the father’s name, Hester must raise her child alone and live with the guilt of her sins in dishonor. This contributes to the idea that Dimmesdale and Hester were both destroyed by their deception and secrecy.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter introduces adultery between Hester and Dimmesdale to oppose Puritanism, which believes in absolute goodness and wickedness. These two sinners’ mutual crime and yearning for redemption indicate dualism in humanity. The conflicted irony between their inner and public selves heightens the tension in the novel that dissolves with their unity. Hawthorne’s use of contrast in The Scarlet Letter reveals the duality of Dimmesdale and Hester’s identities to criticize Puritanism’s inflexible judgment and to promote tolerance within humanity, which resolves with the acceptance of one’s unchanging identity at the end.

The setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet letter” is crucial to the understanding of the event that takes place in the story. The setting of the story is in Salem, Massachusetts during the Puritan era. During the Puritan era, adultery was taken as a very serious sin, and this is what Hester and Dimmesdale committ with each other. Because of the sin, their lives change, Hester has to walk around in public with a Scarlet Letter “A” which stands for adultery, and she is constantly being tortured and is thought of as less than a person. Dimmesdale walks around with his sin kept as secret, because he never admits his sin, his mental state is changing, and the sin degrades his well-being. Chillingworth

The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, narrates the experiences of Hester Prynne, a beautiful young woman in Puritan times, after committing the sin of adultery with the local Reverend, Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale. Because she became pregnant, she bears the public scorn of her sin, while the town does not uncover Mr. Dimmesdale’s participation in the act until the very end of the novel. Using the Puritan society as the setting, and the development of both Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, Hawthorne explores the concepts of individuality, identity, and isolation. Through Hester and Dimmesdale, he presents two scenarios: one in which the character is isolated and freed from society,

As a prose romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter sets characters up in opposition to each other to illustrate extremes of human experience. Dimmesdale is presented as the ultimate hypocrite, preaching moral righteousness to the Puritan community whilst being an adulterer himself. Hester, on the other hand, is painted in stark contrast to Dimmesdale: although shunned as an adulterer by the Puritan community, she lives out her life honestly, taking care of her illegitimate daughter Pearl. The forest is a place of liberation from oppressive social norms and a place of revelation for Hester and Dimmesdale, where they are able to reveal aspects of themselves that they

The imorialty that is betrayed in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book “ The Scarlet Letter” is very descriptive. The characters Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale commit adultery. They both end up paying for their sin but in to very different ways. Hester is open with hers while Dimmesdale tries to hide the truth. As the story goes on the character change and they have two very different views on the sin that they have both committed together.

In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hathorne, Hester Prynne commits adultery with Dimmsdale and has a daughter named Pearl. According to the 17th century Puritan society, Hester commits a big sin by having an affair and the child. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss whether or not she would be able to keep her daughter despite her wrong doings. In the two chapters, Hawthorne exemplifies the idea of living with guilt and shame during a time of strict social norms.

Throughout history, one reoccurring 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 affect 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