Redemption In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Hester displays acts of courage that portray her as a heroic character. Hester clearly suffers from her punishment of having to wear the scarlet letter ‘A’ in public as she attempts to maintain

Guilt and shame haunt all three of the main characters in The Scarlet Letter, but how they each handle their sin will change their lives forever. Hester Prynne’s guilt is publicly exploited. She has to live with her shame for the rest of her life by wearing a scarlet letter on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, on the other hand, is just as guilty of adultery as Hester, but he allows his guilt to remain a secret. Instead of telling the people of his vile sin, the Reverend allows it to eat away at his rotting soul. The shame of what he has done slowly kills him. The last sinner in this guilty trio is Rodger Chillingworth. This evil man not only hides his true identity as Hester’s husband, but also mentally torments

The Scarlet Letter is a novel about a Puritan woman who has committed adultery and must pay for her sin by wearing a scarlet “A'; on her bosom. The woman, Hester Prynne, must struggle through everyday life with the guilt of her sin. The novel is also about the suffering that is endured by not admitting to one’s wrongs. Reverend Mister Dimmesdale learns that secrecy only makes the guilt increase. Nathaniel Hawthorne is trying to display how guilt is the everlasting payment for sinful actions. The theme of guilt as reparation for sin in The Scarlet Letter is revealed through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of northeastern, colonial settings, various conflicts, and

The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the nephew of John Hathorne. During the Salem Witch Trials, the only judge that did not apologize for the remorseless and cruel acts that were put upon many men and women was in fact John Hathorne. Nathaniel changed his last name from Hathorne to Hawthorne in an attempt to disassociate himself from his uncle. John Hathorne is the reason why Nathaniel Hawthorne is obsessed with the puritan times. Hawthorne lived in the 1800s, but the setting of the novel is based before the Salem Witch Trials were held in the 1600s. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of the scarlet letter, Dimmesdale, and burrs to contribute to the overall theme of guilt.

Hester’s punishment goes beyond the symbolism of the scarlet letter A she must wear on her chest, to the point where she is stripped of her humanity and is completely objectified, lowered to the level of a savage animal, unable to deny her base desires. However, if Hester had been a man, no one would have thought all too much of it, and let it go sooner. The only reason people reacted so strongly to finding out that Dimmesdale was the person Hester cheated with is because he’s a man of the cloth and also because he died right after confessing. In fact, the puritan patriarchs and some others defended that Dimmesdale’s confession was an allegorical performance and merely a continuation of his moving

In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale committed adultery. The Puritans decided that God’s judgment was not enough for Hester, and therefore, she needed to be humiliated and isolated from everyone in that town. Christians are called to bring people to God not condemn. “Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive” (Hawthorne 557). The sin committed by Hester and Dimmesdale was a sin of passion. A sin of passion is a sin that is committed in the moment. Hawthorne develops his whole novel around the sin of these two people. With every sin committed, there are consequences that follow. Hawthorne uses this sin to show how consequences affect those directly involved and those that are not. It is true

“Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,- at her, the child of honorable parents,- at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman,- at her, who had once been innocent,- as the figure, the body, the reality of sin” (Hawthorne 66-67). This quote explains how Hester Prynne, who committed adultery, would always be remembered for her sins. Because of this, Hester felt very guilty about what she had done. However, this is not the only example of sin and guilt in the novel. Most of the main characters committed sins and felt guilty afterwards.

She also realizes that her shame, were she worthy to be rid of it, might “speak a different purport.”(471) Hawthorne does feel moral sympathy for Hester, but her place in the story is to exhibit that persons who appoint our moral concern may however value proper censure. The shame and the humiliation appear to have totally flattened Hester’s heart, even though the disgrace and the anguish pain have prepared a “Sister of Mercy” out of Hester. Much of the aloofness of Hester is because of the fact that her life has curved from fervor and feelings to contemplation. This conversion has a psychological

Guilt and shame, we all know these emotions, they put your stomach in knots, a burning feeling in your face, and make your hands shake as you shrink deep into yourself. Guilt and shame influence your decisions, perspective, and even your physical state after a prolonged period of time. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter excellently represents the effect these emotions have on a person. The Scarlet Letter, which is set in 1644 Puritan Boston, dabbles with sin, guilt, and redemption through the characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, who commit adultery and face the consequences of their actions from society and themselves. While both Hester and Arthur committed the same crime together they experience different side effects of

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne protagonist Hester undergoes years of soul searching as a result of the social isolation caused by her scarlet letter, a punishment for her committing adultery. She is subjected to public shaming and must answer very difficult questions to herself about what it means to be a Puritan woman, a mother to a child of sin, and how she can make peace with her past relations which have brought her to this place of shame and aloneness. Overall, it’s the story of a woman who has sinned, and is rejected from society as a result; and the mental anguish and tough questions that Hester must face. Hawthorne uses the personification of Hester’s thoughts, exploration of her innermost feelings, and metaphors of her being lost to reveal how alone and disoriented Hester feels struggling to reconcile her past sins with her present life of isolation and shame. The first paragraph of the given passage describes how deeply Hester is considering the circumstances of her current place

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a classic story that deals with love, betrayal, and forgiveness. It is a story that is full of morals and good life lessons. This story, although old, deals with things that we still face today such as: deceptions, sins, and the repercussions of revenge. It also shows how the outcome of forgiveness can help you move on and grow as a person, while the need for revenge can destroy you and leave you with nothing. One of the many secrets in this book, is that Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale were committing adultery.

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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne the characters, Hester and Dimmesdale both committed sins that are considered horrible in their society and they both had moral consequences related to whether or not they tried to redeem themselves. Hawthorne says that redemption is earned by expressing your sins.

Through out the course of history, those who were considered sinners were often out casted from the society. This is much the case with Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. After a public trial, Hester is considered a sinner due to her birthing of a so called “devil child”. Hester is convicted to the life long bearing of a scarlet letter on her chest. The Scarlet Letter that Hester Prynne wears symbolizes the change in perception of sin through out the novel. Due to the revelations of the governor Winthrop and the reverend Dimmesdale, the way sin is perceived changes from one of shame to the idea that every one is a sinner in their own right.

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.