Have you ever done something wrong in a moment’s time that has affected your life, and the lives of others, forever? In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery with an unknown man, later revealed to be Reverend Dimmesdale, and it not only affects her life, but the lives of several different people. At the beginning of the story, when Hester is standing on the scaffold in front of everyone, she sees her husband, Roger Chillingworth, who has just arrived to Boston, standing in the crowd. When he and Hester have a conversation and she refuses to tell him who the child’s father is, he vows that he will find out the name of the father of Hester’s child. Because he has become so obsessed with finding out who the man is and is looking to seek revenge, Chillingworth becomes a completely different character than when he was first introduced, which demonstrates the strength of the nature of evil. Third person point of view is when an author writes a story using pronouns, such as “he,” “she,” or “they” and avoids using words like “I” and “me.” By writing a story in third person, it allows the author to be more flexible and creative than if they wrote in first …show more content…
The Black Man in the novel signifies evil and darkness and the actual “Black Man” is referred to as the devil. He first appears in the novel when Hester is talking to Roger and she says “art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?” (72). Therefore, in this statement, Hester is comparing Chillingworth to the Black Man and believes that he is after revenge. Also, in chapter 16, Pearl asks her mother to tell her a story about the Black Man and about how he sets a mark on the bosoms of the people who have written their names in his black book, drawing the conclusion that the letter her mother wears on her chest is the result of Hester doing something
Hester Prynne, the protagonist in the book The Scarlet Letter, has committed the sin of adultery, but learned to use that mistake as a form of strength. Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth, sent her to America and was supposed to follow her, but never arrived in Boston. While Hester was waiting on Chillingworth, she had an affair with the town minister, Dimmesdale. As a result, Hester gave birth to a beautiful daughter and was forced to wear the scarlet
guilty of adultery. Hester's punishment is to wear the scarlet letter “A” to inform the entire town that this woman is a sinner. Throughout the novel, the reader comes to know Hester, the sinner, Reverend Dimmesdale, the minister that Hester had an affair with; and Chillingworth, Hester’s estranged husband whose vengeful mission is to get back at Dimmesdale. The
Point of View: The story is told from the third person omniscient point of view.
In the novel The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a character by the name of Roger Chillingworth had committed the worst sin of all; he basically killed another character, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Everyone has been in a position where they have had the chance of blackmailing or plotting revenge on someone. Chillingworth did exactly that and ended torturing Dimmesdale to his death. Dimmesdale was not the single one affected by Chillingworth's devilish doings. Chillingworth had a wife, but no one knew of their relationship. Her name was Hester Prynne and she had an tactless child named Pearl. The Reverend Dimmesdale had an affair with Hester, and he is the real father of Pearl. Throughout the novel the people of Boston were withheld this information, along with the information of Hester's real husband.
In The Scarlet Letter (1850), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s theme of “the mesh of good and evil” illustrates, through the linking of symbols and characters, the reality of human nature. The expression of these opposites creates the mirroring affect that Hawthorne alludes to countless times in the story whether it is at the Governor’s house or the brookside in the woods. Throughout the story the relation of the flowers, the mirror that each character has inside them, and the comparison of the leach to Chillingworth, are the symbols that express the fault of human nature.
Chillingworth is the personification of purposeful sin rather than subconscious sin.As the book continues he conciously get wrapped up more and more in his prolific needs for knowing the father and exacting his judgement upon them regardless of the spiritual and actual consequences. A quote that illustrates his physical change-“A change had come over his features,—how much uglier they were,—how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen,—since the days when she had familiarly known him.”(Hawthorne 102) As stated, Chillingworth's appearance becomes more disheveled, dark and dirty from when Hester had known him-to appear more like the sin he embodies. A clear physical representation of the sin manifesting itself in and on him. His infamy in conscious sin is known by the townspeople and they avoid and speak ill of him accordingly. He is aware the he is sinning, yet it doesn't seem to change his mindset as he continues his goal of destroying the reverend."We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, nev...
One belief that people live by is that evil is the nature of mankind, yet there are others that feel man has good intentions but those intentions can be overrun by the devil. Nathaniel Hawthorne points out that the former is true of all people in the novel The Scarlet Letter.
In society there are always two kinds of people, good people and bad people. The good people, the teachers pets who always do everything right. They follow the rules and always think of others. Then, you have to bad people, the trouble makers who always do the wrong thing. They break the rules and do things their way. Everyone is classified in one group or the other, and is always thought to be good or bad. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pearl is evil.
We are all sinners. Although one may try hard not to sin, all humans eventually succumb at some time or another to sin. While people may not able to avoid the fate which awaits them, the power of free will allows people to decide how they will respond to sin. While some may respond with guilt and regret, others may react with a sense of redemption and a renewed sense of responsibility.
"Confess thy truth and thou shall have eternal rest." I belive that is the moral to be taught in this novel of inspirational love, yet a novel of much sorrow. The impossible became possible in The Scarlet Letter, a story set back in the Puritan Times. In this response, I will give my reactions in writing to different aspects of the novel;the characchters, my likes and dislikes, my questions, and my opinion of the harsh Puritain lifestyle. Hester Prynne, the Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth each suffered guilt in their own way in the novel The Scarlet Letter. In the beginning of the novel, Hester Prynne should have not suffered the way she did on the scaffold alone. She was forced to be intergated by the high-officials of the town, while holding her little Pearl in arms. Making matters worse, the father of the child was in that very group of officals. She was then sentenced to wear the scarlet letter "A", showing her guilt "externally". Unable to take it off, she was forced to show her guilt to the entire settlement. However, the Reverend Dimmesdale suffered "internally", with a scarlet letter of his own engraved in his mind, and on his chest as well. He felt like he betrayed God, and beat himself in a frenzy to prove his wrongdoing. He often questioned wheather his authority was true or not. Roger Chillingworth suffered the least, because he only failed to reveal the secret that he knew, the father of the child who Hester Prynne was forced to live with. This small restriction to his life forced him to suffer "internally". I had different likes and dislikes in the novel The Scarlet Letter. There were many things that needed to be judged to fit into the given catagories, including; character attitudes, and character decisions. For example, the attitude displayed from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was rather unnapealing to me. There are different ways of settling ones guilt rather than whipping oneself in a closet. The one character whose attitude was appealing to me was that of Pearl's. She showed that mistakes in a relationship often lead to bad situations. Her mischeif and connection to the devil are examples of just those situations. Character decisions played an euqally important role. For example, I thought the descision for Hester not to tell who was the father of Pearl on the scaffold to be very brave, but was wrong.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mr. Dimmesdale’s greatest fear is that the townspeople will find out about his sin of adultery with Hester Prynne. Mr. Dimmesdale fears that his soul could not take the shame of such a disclosure, as he is an important moral figure in society. However, in not confessing his sin to the public, he suffers through the guilt of his sin, a pain which is exacerbated by the tortures of Roger Chillingworth. Though he consistently chooses guilt over shame, Mr. Dimmesdale goes through a much more painful experience than Hester, who endured the public shame of the scarlet letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s guilt is much more damaging to his soul than any shame that he might have endured.
Evil manifests itself in characters from many books. These characters are usually the antagonists of the story. Rodger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Captain Ahab in Moby Dick by Herman Melville are examples of evil antagonists. Ahab and Chillingworth both are very similar in how the evil manifests within them.
Evil manifests in many people, which causes their minds and actions to become immoral and malevolent. Roger Chillingworth presents his immoral persona in The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthrone, by causing the agony and unexpected death of Arthur Dimmsdale. Through the voyage on the Pequod in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Captain Ahab discards the ship’s initial plan for whaling and instead goes on the hunt for the whale that taunts him in the sea, leading to the death of his crew. Roger Chillingworth and Captain Ahab display their evilness by consuming their minds with the idea of revenge, which is why these two men are connected by the depravity in their souls.
Chillingworth isn’t the only one that has an evil spirit. Mistress Hibbins is known for riding with “The Black Man” in the forest on a horse because of her sinister ways---the ways of a witch. Both Mistress Hibbins and Chillingworth were expected to be good people, yet they turned out to be the most hideous characters of The Scarlet Letter. Though the appearance of Roger Chillingworth started out as the kind and friendly physician, he was so purely evil and driven by revenge that it twisted his mind into something horrible.
First-person point of view according to Approaching Literature is “when a story is told by a narrator using the first-person pronoun I, the story is said to be using first-person point of view”(Schakel and Ridl 162). First-person point of view breaks off into three subdivisions of narrators: naïve narrator, unreliable narrator, and reliable narrator. On the other hand, third-person point of view according to Approaching Literature are “stories told by anonymous or identified outside observers who do not refer to themselves using the pronoun I or we are said to use third-person point of view”(Schakel and Ridl 164). Third-person point of view also breaks down into three subdivisions which are third-person omniscient point of view, third-person objective point of view, and third-person limited point of view. Point of view provides a looking glass for the reader to look at the world in the narrators eyes. Point of view is the way the author allows you to “see” and “hear” what’s going on in the story. Great authors can fix their reader’s attention on exactly the detail, opinion, or emotion the author wants to emphasize by manipulating the point of view of the