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Themes in scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Themes in scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Discuss Hawthorne contribution to American literature
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In the novel entitled The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates the effect alienation has on individuals. The act of adultery in the novel causes many individuals to suffer the personal consequences of alienation in some way. Using direct and indirect relationships with adultery, Hawthorne uses alienation to negatively affect the lives of Hester, Dimmesdale, Pearl, and Chillingworth.
In the novel, an adulterous relationship directly leads to alienation negatively impacting Hester and Dimmesdale’s lives. After committing adultery, they become alienated from society as punishment. Hester’s alienation transpires in the form of the scarlet letter. It acts as a constant reminder to the people around her of her sins. Hester feels the
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alienation between herself and the rest of the community because “every word, every gesture, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed that she [is] banished” (Hawthorne 85). The actions of the people negatively impact Hester’s life because they generate the cause for her to feel unwanted in society. Alienation through the scarlet letter also affects Hester in a negative way by draining the light and passion out of her. She becomes cold and harsh. These things negatively affect Hester’s life by completely changing her inner self. In addition, Dimmesdale becomes alienated from society through his guilt. He suffers alone from guilt because he knows the truth about the father of Hester’s child, but he does not contain the amount of strength needed to share the information. This alienation negatively affects Dimmesdale’s life because it causes him to physically harm himself in order to relieve some of the guilt. He scourges himself and fasts “until his knees tremble beneath him, as an act of penance” (Hawthorne 147). This alienation from guilt causes Dimmesdale to decline in health and eventually die. The act of adultery directly committed by Hester and Dimmesdale impacts their lives in a negative way because they become alienated through the stigma Hester wears and the immense guilt Dimmesdale experiences. Furthermore, Chillingworth and Pearl’s lives become negatively affected through their experience of alienation as a consequence of indirect relationships with adultery.
While they did not commit adultery, they suffer from the adultery committed by others. Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, becomes alienated through his pursuit of revenge, revenge against Hester and Dimmesdale as a result of their adultery against him. This alienation affects Chillingworth’s life negatively because, overcome for the need of revenge, he has nothing else to live for. Chillingworth wants Hester to “live, therefore, and bear about the doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women…in the eyes of yonder child” (Hawthorne 74). Chillingworth wants revenge by allowing Hester to live in order for her to face the ignominy from her actions. Additionally, alienation negatively affects Pearl’s life because she becomes alienated as a result of her status as the child created through Hester and Dimmesdale’s adultery. Pearl “[is] a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she [has] no right among christened infants” (Hawthorne 94). Pearl’s alienation from society occurred since birth because of the alienation of Hester. Alienation affects Pearl’s life in a negative way because it causes her to rely solely on Hester and do everything with her since the rest of the society does not associate with Pearl. Alienation in The Scarlet Letter, relating directly and indirectly with
adultery, causes the characters in the novel to become consumed by revenge, rely solely on one another, torture themselves out of guilt, and lose their true selves completely.
Isolation can affect people in many different ways, for example, it could affect someone physically or emotionally. Isolation can drastically affect people in many different areas of their life. Hester is affected by isolation both emotionally and physically. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn Hester becomes alienated, isolated, physically and emotionally because of the red letter that she wears on her chest.
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 with the clergyman, Dimmesdale. Because the public's knowledge of her sin, Hester is excluded physically, mentally, and socially from the normal society of the Puritan settlement. She lives on the outskirts of town in a small cottage where she makes her living as a seamstress. Though she is known to be a great sewer amongst the people, Hester is still not able to sew certain items, such as a new bride's veil. Hester also has no interaction with others; instead she is taunted, if not completely ignored, by all that pass her by. Despite the ill treatment of the society, Hester's soul is not corrupted. Instead, she flourishes and improves herself in spite of the burden of wearing the scarlet letter and she repeatedly defies the conventional Puritan thoughts and values by showing what appears to us as strength of character. Her good works, such as helping the less fortunate, strengthen her inner spirit, and eventually partially welcome her back to the society that once shunned her.
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.
Both Hester and Dimmesdale, are characters in the Scarlet Letter. They suffer with the guilt of the sin of adultery that they committed. At the time, the Puritans looked down on this type of sin. Hester and Dimmesdale can be compared and contrast in the way they handled their scarlet letter, their cowardliness, and their belief of what the afterlife is.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a truly outstanding author. His detailed descriptions and imagery will surely keep people interested in reading The Scarlet Letter for years to come. In writing this book he used themes evident throughout the entirety of the novel. These themes are illustrated in what happens to the characters and how they react. By examining how these themes affect the main characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth, one can obtain a better understanding of what Hawthorne was trying to impress upon his readers.
Through the use of numerous symbols, Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter serves as an allegory for the story of Adam and Eve and its relation to sin, knowledge, and the human condition that is present in human society. Curious for the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, which resulted in the revelation of their “humanness” and expulsion from the “divine garden” as they then suffered the pain and joy of being humans. Just as Adam and Eve were expelled from their society and suffered in their own being, so were Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. Hester was out casted and shunned, while Dimmesdale suffered under his own guilt. After knowledge of her affair is made known, Hester is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest to symbolize her crime of adultery, and is separated from the Puritan society. Another “A” appears in the story, and is not embroidered, but instead scarred on Dimmesdale’s chest as a symbol of guilt and suffering. Hester’s symbol of guilt comes in the form of her daughter, Pearl, who is the manifestation of her adultery, and also the living version of her scarlet letter. Each of these symbols come together to represent that with sin comes personal growth and advancement of oneself in society as the sinner endures the good and bad consequences.
Hester Prynne was the main character in the Scarlet Letter. Hester sin was committing adultery with minister Arthur Dimmsdale. Birthing a child named Pearl of pure sin. By committing her sin they punished her. “‘If thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer!" (98 ) The community made her stand on the scaffold for public humiliation. Wearing the letter “A” on her garments meaning Adultery as another punishment. The community shunned Hester and Pearl looking at them as satans work. Hester believes that she should remain in Boston since that were her crime of adultery was committed making it as a reminder to herself what shes have done. Also staying to protect Dimmesdale from Chillingworth.
The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, shows the adverse consequences caused by adultery between Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. Dimmesdale and Hester committed the supreme sin of the Puritan society they belong. They must both deal with the effects of the scarlet letter. Pearl, the daughter of the two lovers, continuously punishes Hester for what she has done. Dimmesdale can only see Hester and Pearl when others will not find out or see. Hester finds a way to support herself and daughter, and at the same time, puts a mark on the possessions of some who are a part of society. The sin of adultery created repercussions that were shared and individually experienced by Reverend Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne.
In the Scarlet Letter, is a story of a young beautiful woman, Hester Prynne, who commits adultery and stays tough when the community harasses her. She is being punished for adultery, which is a disgusting sin. Her township community thinks of her as a proud but shameful woman who has defied the ways of the Puritans, so her punishment should be harsher. To the Puritans, Hester has defied them, taken the consequences and later conform to them. Hester Prynne undergoes both physical and emotional upsets of which consequences affect her openly. She locates a deserted house on the neighborhood of township far from any environs to any other tenancy (Hawthorne, 3-6).
Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale in the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, struggle to go about life. The characters Hester and Dimmesdale both are ostracized in the story and run into complications with the puritan society and how its morals affect them. The literary elements symbolism, imagery, and setting emphasize the motivations and reactions with the conflict of individual vs. society.
Hester Prynne committed a crime so severe that it changed her life into coils of torment and defeat. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester is publicly recognized as an adulteress and expelled from society. Alongside the theme of isolation, the scarlet letter, or symbol of sin, is meant to shame Hester but instead transforms her from a woman of ordinary living into a stronger person.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross once said, “Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.” This quote truly captures Dimmesdale’s death and journey to death, it is guilt that drives him to the grave and it accompanies him throughout all five grieving stages. Dimmesdale is one of many characters in The Scarlet Letter that is faced with problems both personally and spiritually. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a romantic novel about a young woman, Hester Prynne, who is permanently marked with her sin by a scarlet A she must bare on her chest and also by her daughter Pearl. Hester committed adultery with the young minister of Boston, Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester, and her beloved child Pearl, learn to over come the A and change the meaning of it from adulterer to able, while they are changing the way society views them, Dimmesdale is withering away under the “care” of Rodger Chillingworth, Hester’s past husband. Chillingworth knows about the sin and seeks revenge on Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale is helpless and in a downward spiral. He let the sin become who he is, even though the towns people don’t know of his adultery until his dying breath. The Scarlet Letter is a story about overcoming the darkness that hangs above you and stepping out of the sin or gloom that controls you. For characters like Hester this is a fairly easy thing to handle, but on the flip side characters like Dimmesdale struggle and can not seem to escape their heinous acts and don’t find peace of mind until they die. The Scarlet Letter mainly focuses on the process of overcoming these troubling times and how each individual character handles the pressure, stress, and guilt that come along with it differently. Arthur Dimmesdale is a lost soul after his sin, he expe...
At the beginning of the Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne is labeled as the “bad guy”. The townspeople demand the other adulterer’s name, but Hester denies this revelation. She does not reveal it because she knows that the information will crumble the foundation of the Puritan religion and the town itself. “‘But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he?’ ‘Ask me not!’ replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his face. ‘That thou shalt never know!’(Hawthorne 52). Hester knows that finding out that the father of the child, the Minister that is leading the town, will diminish credibility for the church and for Dimmesdale, the Minister. During her punishment, Hester decides to move out near the woods and make a living as a seamstress. Hester is regarded as an outcast from Boston, but she still gives back to the society that shuns her. ‘“Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?’ they would say to strangers. ‘It is our Hester, —the town's own Hester, —who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!’”(Hawthorne 111). Her acts of kindness, helping the sick and comforting the afflicted, toward the society that makes her an outcast shows the inner goodness of a person. Throu...
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, there are many moral and social themes develped throughout the novel. Each theme is very important to the overall effect of the novel. In essence, The Scarlet Letter is a story of sin, punishment and the importance of truth. One theme which plays a big role in The Scarlet Letter is that of sin and its effects. Throughout the novel there were many sins committed by various characters. The effects of these sins are different in each character and every character was punished in a unique way. Two characters were perfect examples of this theme in the novel. Hester Prynne and The Reverend Dimmesdale best demonstrated the theme of the effects of sin.
Hester Pryne from The Scarlet Letter is alienated after she sins, but redeems herself by accepting her identity and reuniting with the rest of society. Hawthorne uses these characters to teach two different lessons. The first is of the damnation that is the result of alienation and isolation from society and humanity. The second is that reuniting with society can prevent damnation and put an end to alienation and isolation from humanity.