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Literary criticism of the scarlet letter
Introduction of the scarlet letter nathaniel hawthorne
Introduction of the scarlet letter nathaniel hawthorne
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In the novel The Scarlet Letter, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates life in the 17th century of Hester Prynne, an adulterer, and her daughter Pearl. Hawthorne depicts the good qualities of Hester throughout the novel although her sin has casted her and her daughter out of Puritan society. Moreover, in 2010, the director Will Gluck created the film Easy A, many say it is the identical and updated version of The Scarlet Letter. The film Easy A illustrates the story of a teenage girl; Olive Prendergast is accused of prostitution through rumors in her school. Despite the opposing cultural and social backgrounds, the similarities in the overall plot between concealing secrets, the effect of sin, and being able to others is the reason why Will Gluck's film Easy A is the modern version of the novel The Scarlet Letter.
Throughout the novel, Hester keeps the secrets to protect herself, her daughter Pearl and her lover Dimmesdale. Hester keeps secret from the Puritan society that Dimmesdale is the father of Pearl in order to protect Dimmesdale's position in the church. When the town asks Hester to admit who the father is she states, ""I will not speak!" answered Hester, “And my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know an earthly one!”" (78). Hester was willing not to share even though Dimmesdale wanted her to confess and it would allow Dimmesdale help parent Pearl. This demonstrates the good character of Hester, despite how it ridiculed her that her lover had high power in the community when he was just as much to blame. Also, Hester never shares the true identity of the mysterious doctor Chillingworth to society in fear of hurting her lover. As Chillingworth starts getting closer to Dimmesdale and affecting his h...
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...ive originally was trying to help others out in the expense of giving up her reputation. To the boys she helped, she was considered a nice person and was helpful. In result, the two characters both throughout their story lines were selfless and helped others no matter the cost of their reputation.
The novel The Scarlet Letter and the film Easy A's plot is very similar overall. Even though not all minor details are the same, the biggest points and theme are the same. Between the powerful secrets that Hester and Olive kept to keep reputations intact and people protected, the major impact their sins affected their life and where they were labeled in society, and how both characters helped others and were considered able made the film and the novel very similar. Will Gluck's movie Easy A is the updated and upbeat version of the classic novel The Scarlet Letter.
In “The Scarlet Letter,” the main character Hester get punished for adultery. In the beginning, she thought that her husband has died so she fell in love with Dimmesdale. However, her husband did not die and came back. Her husband, Chillingworth, later finds out that Hester has a secret lover. Therefore tried to find out who he is. At first Chillingworth does not reveal himself as Hester’s husband because she was being punished for adultery and he did not want to be ashamed. Later he tries to find out Hester’s secret lover by asking her but she will not tell him which makes him for desperate and angry. When he finds out that the secret lover is Dimmesdale, he finds out a secret about Dimmesdale.
Consequently enough, Dimmesdale is trying to convince Hester to reveal the man who has sinned along with her, so the man can be relieved of his guilt, somewhat ironic because he is the man who has sinned along side with her. "What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee and the sorrow without.
Not only in this story of the Scarlet Letter, but throughout the early churches, we often see religious leaders in this predicament of coming forward or not coming forward with the truth of their role within certain situations. Hester, on the other hand, is portrayed as strong but also abandoned, because she is standing alone for the sins she could not have committed alone. Dimmesdale also struggles with confessing to Pearl the truth and keeping it from her. At first he is regarded as being selfish for not confessing right away and as a result, when he does confess, it is not well received from Pearl at all. This is not only because she is flustered from finding out, but Pearl knows that Dimmesdale abandoned them at first as he weighed the options.
The Scarlet Letter starts off by throwing Hester Prynne into drama after being convicted for adultery in a Puritan area. Traveling from Europe to America causes complications in her travel which also then separates her from her husband, Roger Chillingworth for about three years. Due to the separation, Hester has an affair with an unknown lover resulting in having a child. Ironically, her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, is a Reverend belonging to their church who also is part of the superiors punishing the adulterer. No matter how many punishments are administered to Hester, her reactions are not changed. Through various punishments, Hester Prynne embraces her sin by embroidering a scarlet letter “A” onto her breast. However, she is also traumatized deep within from everything she’s been through. Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts this story of sin by using rhetorical devices such as allusion, alliteration and symbolism.
The life of secrecy wasn 't as easy as Dimmesdale had thought it would be because he is now very ill from all the stress by keeping it inside. His sickness nonetheless, is not physically, but mentally. Dimmesdale was prescribed medication to keep himself from shutting down. He is still fully committed to staying with Hester and their daughter, Pearl, even if their relationship cannot move any further at the time being because Hester is still making a good name for herself again. The medicine however, only works a little bit or for a small amount of time because of how much guilt Dimmesdale is giving himself from not confessing. Arthur Dimmesdale lives with the pain growing and growing without confessing, wanting to please Hester, keep his promise to her and make sure she gets treated the way she is supposed to from all the drudgery she has done to remake her life new. Dimmesdale, at the time has his concentration on keeping other people happy at his time of life to make up for the sin he has done that he did not focus on keeping himself happy and neither did anyone else. Arthur Dimmesdale did not have the opportunity to confess his sins to the town because Hester and he agreed to keep that part of their life a secret from people, not wanting to have an even higher punishment. After more and more time passes on, Dimmesdale continues his ministry following his new emotional path
When someone sees or hears the word scarlet, they think of a brilliant red color. However, when others see or hear the word scarlet they think of sin or one who is wicked and heinous such as Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter or Olive Penderghast in Easy A. The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story about a Puritan woman, Hester who is forced to wear a letter A to identify her sin of adultery. In Easy A, directed by Will Gluck, high schooler, Olive Penderghast wants to be accepted by others so she starts a rumor that she slept with a fellow student. Similarities and differences such as attention, consequences, and hypocrisy are evident between The Scarlet Letter and Easy A.
Although perceived as two utterly different men, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth share some remarkable similarities. Lying is one of these connections, as both men lie to one another concerning their connections to Hester and she conceals the secrets of their connections to her as well. Inquisitive as to whom Hester loved Chillingworth questions her, and she replies, “That thou shalt never know!” (86), so Chillingworth says to Hester “Breathe not, to any human soul, that thou dost ever call me husband!” (88), and she replies, “I will keep thy secret, as I have this” (88). Even though one would suppose both men to have significant roles in Hester’s life, they distance themselves and pretend as
Hester thinks about the mercy of God herself in the story and comes to the conclusion that “man had marked [her] sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin [...] had given her a lovely child” (86). Society decides to punish Hester by public humiliation and eternal shame, while God decides to let nature take its own path, and blesses‒or rather curses‒Hester with her own child. Although this is a more merciful consequence, children are still a large challenge in themselves. Young children are difficult, and Pearl especially seemed to be “a demon offspring; such as, since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother’s sin” (95). Through having to raise Pearl, Hester is still being disciplined for her rash actions, but in a way that will better teach her the lessons she needs to learn from her mistake. When one observes the behaviors of both Hester and Dimmesdale, it becomes clear that Dimmesdale has failed to learn completely from his
The secrets which Hester keeps are because she is silent and hardly talks to anyone. “Various critics have interpreted her silence… as both empowering… and disempowering… Yet silence, in Hester’s case, offers a type of passive resistance to male probing” (Elbert, 258). One may refer back to the scene at the beginning when Reverend Wilson is trying to get the name of the other sinner. As Hester refuses, one may see this as a foreshadowing for other events. Hester is a strong woman who would not tell a soul the secrets that interconnect Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. The secrets however begin to take a toll of Hester especially as Chillingworth comes to town and is dying to know who the father of Pearl is.
After close analysis, it becomes evident of the amount of work that is put into each, but one must ask, why has the director adapted their own style of depicting the story? How has the story of Hester Prynne been modified? Regarding works, major differences and similarities between the characterization, visual imagery, symbolism, narration and plot, shows how free adaptation is the correct term used. The characters of The Scarlet Letter show the ruthless, orthodox Puritan society. Hester was a feminist, self-reliant conformist, living on her own.
Pearl is not only a symbol of Hester but also a symbol to Dimmsdale. Pearl will not let him into her life until he accepts his sin. She wants him as a father but will not let him until he will not hide his sin in public. Pearl knows that Dimmsdale will not be seen holding her hand in the public eye and this bothers her. She asks her mother, " wilt tho promise to hold my and thy mothers hand to-morrow?"(105)
While Hester tries to protect Dimmesdale by not giving the name of Pearl's father, she actually condemns him to a long road of suffering, self torture and disappointment. She does this by letting him keep the sin he committed in secret while he watches her being publicly punished. Chillingworth observes Dimmesdale's desire to confess, as well as his lack of willpower to do so. Dimmesdale rationalizes not confessing; all the while Chillingworth is torturing with constant reminders of his hypocrisy. Hester never voluntarily confesses to committing adultery, and never feels any remorse for it. Her public punishment comes not as a result of her having any contrition, but rather her apparent pregnancy. She stays in the town to be close to Dimmesdale, as a reader would find on page 84, "There dwelt...the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union..." She also stays in town to convince others, as well as herself, that she is actually regretful for her sin even though she knows in her heart she is not. She does this to appease her guilt. As Hawthorne puts it on page 84, "Here...had been the scene of her guilt...
In the novel, Hawthorne criticizes the “Puritan allegorization of experience” that considers all sins to be equal, and denies the sufficient evaluation of the specifics of moral behavior. In addition, the notion of knowledge is socialized through this method, as evidenced by the “A” in Scarlet, which is the principal illustration of Puritan signification, and seemingly allegorizes Hester‘s being. Hawthorne significantly incorporates the interpretations of the “A” in the novel, which unsettles the allegorical vehicle as well as meaning rather than degenerates into meaningless perspectivism. This undermines the Puritan autocracy‘s symbolic equation of “A” with adultery, therefore, humanizing and de-allegorizing Hester‘s being as well as moral complexity. Throughout the novel, the meaning of “A” continually become clear with the representation of several positive senses helping the reader to understand characters, especially Hester (Imene
The Scarlet Letter is a classic novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne which entangles the lives of two characters Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale together through an unpardonable sin-adultery. With two different lifestyles, this act of adultery affects each of them differently. Hester is an average female citizen who is married to a Roger Chillingworth from Europe while Dimmesdale is a Puritan minister from England (61). Along the course of time after the act of adultery had happened, Hester could not hide the fact that she was bearing a child that was not of her husband, but from another man. She never reveals that this man is in fact Arthur Dimmesdale, and so only she receives the punishment of prison. Although it is Hester who receives the condemnation and punishment from the townspeople and officials, Dimmesdale is also punished by his conscience as he lives his life with the secret burden hanging between him and Hester.
The Scarlet Letter is a blend of realism, symbolism, and allegory. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses historical settings for this fictional novel and even gives historical background information for the inspiration of the story of Hester Prynne in the introduction of The Scarlet Letter, ‘The Custom-House’. The psychological exploration of the characters and the author’s use of realistic dialogue only add to the realism of the novel. The most obvious symbol of the novel is the actual scarlet letter ‘A’ that Hester wears on her chest every day, but Hawthorne also uses Hester’s daughter Pearl and their surroundings as symbols as well. Allegory is present as well in The Scarlet Letter and is created through the character types of several characters in the novel.