Theme Of Sin In The Scarlet Letter

The central theme in The Scarlet Letter is that manifested sin will ostracize one from society and un-confessed sin will lead to the destruction of the inner spirit. Hawthorne uses the symbol of the scarlet letter to bring out this idea. In the novel, Hester is forced to wear the scarlet letter A (the symbol of her sin) because she committed adultery

Hester ends up becoming pregnant from this encounter. She has her daughter Pearl from it. Hester is forced to wear a letter A on her chest at all times because of this. This shows that in this time period, people were very limited when it came to marriage and sex. She was unable to deal with the matter privately because the church is what ruled the law in that time. The 10 commandments were laws to them. Hester ends up being in prison for becoming pregnant and isn’t release for a while. After she was released, she was forced to wear the big, red A that was supposed to symbolize the fact that she had an affair. She was the image of the fallen for the

The Puritans despised Hester and her symbol for her sin, and shunned her for many years even after her prison sentence. Hester could have just lived a depressed, lonely life in seclusion with her daughter Pearl, but she decided to accept her sin and wrong doing to become a mentally stronger woman. During the many years of Hester being in prison and being rejected when she was released, she practiced needlework to provide food for her and her daughter. As the people in Salem recognized her talent of her embroidery and garments, they began respecting her talent, and so the scarlet “A” that stood for “adulterer” slowly began to stand for “able.” Hester started to supply apparel for babies, ceremonies, inaugurations, and funerals. Furthermore, the Scarlet letter has another symbolic meaning. When Pearl went to the seashore, she made a green letter “A” out of seaweed – nature’s color. This was symbolic for Pearl’s sinless life so far because she hasn’t truly been introduced to sin; she still is “green” and “pure”. As for Hester, her scarlet “A” is symbolic of her many sins, for no one can avoid sin as they grow older.

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.

Judgment can be the the greatest plague of society. Judgment kripples acceptance, forward growth and blinds entire communities. Though in retrospect plagues are necessary, as is judgment. Without judgment humanity would be blind to people's character exposing them dangerous risks unstable people present. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne , Hester dealt with the judgment repercussions of adultery. Her sin caused society's judgment of her to rise and fall, in tandem producing negative and positive effects for Hester. Throughout the novel the Puritan community shifts their views of Hester. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, judgment that plagued Hester as a result of her sin evolved and shifted the communities views of her.

The very scarlet letter from which the novel’s name is derived from is a symbol of sinning; the scarlet letter represents how Puritan society views sinning as unforgivable and something for public speculation. Hester is punished by wearing hers out for the world to see. The letter is “so fantastically embroidered” that one townswoman argues that its intricacy and design defeat the entire purpose of wearing it. The scarlet letter serves as an

One of the main themes in The Scarlet Letter is that of the secret.  The plot of the book is centered on Hester Prynne’s secret sin of adultery.  Nathaniel Hawthorne draws striking parallelism between secrets held and the physical and mental states of those who hold them.  The Scarlet Letter demonstrates that a secret or feeling kept within slowly engulfs and destroys the soul such as Dimmesdale’s sin of hypocrisy and Chillingworth’s sin of vengeance, while a secret made public, such as Prynne’s adultery, can allow a soul to recover and even strengthen.

Few themes in literature are as influential or tacitly communicate as much as the theme of sin does, especially in The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible. Through their masterpieces, Hawthorne and Miller reveal the commonness of sin and the grave consequences that often follow it, but also the endurance and perseverance of man despite sin, fulfilling Faulkner's idea of the “writer’s duty”, a term he used in his Nobel Banquet speech. According to Faulkner, the “writer’s duty” is to write about man’s “inexhaustible voice”, that he “has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance”, to remind him of the “courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice” that lies in the past. Faulkner states that if used correctly, the works of an author can urge men to “endure and prevail”, which is certainly what The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible teach through the life of Hester Prynne and John Proctor.

First of all, the scarlet letter stands for Hester's sin. By forcing Hester to wear the letter A on her bosom, the Puritan community not only punishes this weak young woman for her adultery but labels her identity as an adulteress and immoral human being as well. "Thus the young and the pure would be taught to look at her, with the letter flaming on her chest", also "as the figure, the body and the reality of sin." And the day Hester began to wear the scarlet A on her bosom is the opening of her darkness. From that moment, people, who look at her, must notice the letter A manifest itself in the red color covering not only her bosom, but her own character. The Puritans now only see the letter A, the representation of sin, scorn and hate

What even is sin? Is it something that you learn just not to do? To some, it may be more like something inside of themselves. Something against a person's own morals. Something that he or she cannot get over or stop thinking about. In The Scarlet Letter, a book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale committed the biggest sin. This is not only because he had sexual relations with a woman who was already married, but also because he would not confess what he had done. It ate his soul away. He could not escape the guilt. He became a hypocrite.

The harsh townspeople force her up on the scaffold to be humiliated in front of the whole town. Not only is she sent up on the scaffold with her sin revealed by the “A” for everyone to see, Hester becomes an example of what a woman should not come to be. The author is talking about Hesters experience on the scaffold and her pregnancy, “Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion”(32). Hester looses her individuality and is labeled by the townspeople and known for the Scarlet Letter. Further, the townspeople singled her out as an alien or outcast of the town forcing her to live an abnormal live. She was ridiculed and known for her one sin, unable to have acceptance back into society. Although the townspeople feel as if Hester has brought sin upon there lives, she clearly have not harmed any of the townspeople physically, and they have no grounds to punish Hester. The cause of the townspeople's harsh disciplinary acts on Hester originates from a strict, unrealistic standards of puritan society and the zero tolerance of any ungodly behavior observed in the town. Due to the absence of proper justice, Hester's sentencing is left up to the harsh townspeople in which they show no mercy or

In the world today, themes and symbolisms have played a major role in the development and presentation of past and present novels. These themes and symbolisms within a novel shape the overall story and often work hand in hand to convey its purpose and meaning. One such novel would include The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne; in this story, along with all his others, he has incorporated his three predominant, driving themes: sin, hypocrisy, and corruption. In The Scarlet Letter,

In The Scarlet Letter Hester and Dimmesdale goes through secrets and guilt. Hester as a young woman she was married to an elderly scholar, while waiting for him she had an affair. Hester and Dimmesdale had a baby and named her pearl. They committed adultery and dimmesdale confess right before he died. People need

In the eyes of a Puritan the crime of adultery that Hester committed was severally punished. It didn’t matter that her husband wasn’t in her life at the time; they were still married and that was considered a sacred vow that you didn’t break. Even though Hester was willing to and endure her punishment in front of the whole town, she was still shunned for her sin. In the town’s folk opinion, wearing a scarlet letter "A" is not enough. They want physical and psychological pain and that is the only way her actions are justified to them.

In “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne presents the consequences of sin as an important aspect in the lives of Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingsworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale. The sin committed, adultery, between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale had resulted in the birth of their innocent little girl, Pearl. This sin ruined the three main characters’ lives completely in different ways. With the sin committed, there were different ways the characters reacted to it: embracing the sin, concealing the sin, and becoming obsessed and consumed with it. With each reaction to the sin there were also different actions of redemption.