Hester Prynne Vs Society

There is an unbalance between what God created to the point of view of society, as society seems always in between of how things should naturally go. We all make different decisions, it all depends how people view it. Adlai E. Stevenson once said “…. The truth is often unpopular…,” meaning that some people cannot take the cruel reality and will rather believe in the lie and live in it. In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the opposition between the harmonious, peaceful nature and the sinful and corrupted society causes the character Hester Prynne to experience inner and external conflicts as she struggles in her life to get the Puritan society to accept her and her actions.

Hester Prynne is directly affected by the consequences as she commits adultery with someone who was not her husband, breaking one of the Ten Commandments. Because of Hester crime, she is publicly shamed and forced to wear a badge of humiliation “A” for the rest of her natural life, as it says, “the SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.”(Nathaniel Hawthorne, 51) stating that she always had the “A” on to remind her and society what she committed. The Scarlet letter marks the beginning of a life full of guilt and isolation for Hester, is the burden that Hester always has to carry, and is what secludes her from everyone else because it represents her sin.

The Puritans lifestyle was like the symbol for perfection because they followed the strict and harsh rules the church and society had put on them to live the holy and “pure” life to please God, as a result, Puritans were always concerned in ac...

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...g character, her charitable deeds for the poor in the community, and her gifted talent of sewing.

In the Scarlet Letter, it shows how the society cast out each person simply because their ideas or point of view is different from the common value society has. Hester Prynne throughout the novel she lives struggling with herself as she tries to deal with the guilt and shame thanks to her actions. Although in the beginning, Hester was humiliated, criticized and a person wanted to get rid of by the townspeople in the end, she was a well-respected being in the Puritan society through her good works. Hester suffered both internally and externally as a consequence of her sins, and this shows that all human-beings makes mistakes even though some mistakes cannot be forgiven or change that easily but it causes people to grow and learn something useful from their own mistakes.