Symbolize Religion And Darkness In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the book, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses sunlight to symbolize religion, and darkness to symbolize everything else in life but specifically sins. He uses Reverend Dimmesdale to show the reader the difference. To give you an idea of how Reverend Dimmesdale came to be who he is in the book you must look at his past. Reverend Dimmesdale was a man in the dark he made sin after sin, until he had a revelation that lightened his soul and lead him to become the Reverend. Nathaniel Hawthorne was using this situation to try to criticize how at the time everyone believed that God was light, God was law, and anything that goes against God’s wishes as stated in the bible is a dark, a sin, and against the law. Reverend Dimmesdale is a man of the church, and at this time the church is everything to the people, he is light and he states, “By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young ministers cheek was accounted for by his too earnest to study, his scrupulous fulfillment of parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp”(Hawthorne 107).

Death was not a bright light for everyone, for some it was a dark hole they had to jump into, death meant the final judgement made by God. Would He send you to heaven or to