Hypocrisy Vs Adultery In Scarlet Letter

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Hawthorne claims that the sin greater than adultery is that of hypocrisy, or forbidding an offender the chance to hide even though “our common nature” is to mask our sins behind others. Throughout The Scarlet Letter many of the main characters and the townspeople were hypocrites and only cared for themselves. The only innocent one was Pearl because she did not do anything wrong; she was the result of a sin that Hester Prynne and Dimmesdale committed. Throughout the novel one can see the growth of some characters and the demise of others due to the sin of hypocrisy. Dimmesdale is the minister within the novel that everyone looks up to. The townspeople believe that he is pure and look to him for guidance; however, he is a sinner but does not …show more content…

Dimmesdale and Hester tell each other that they love one another; however, Hester keeps secrets from Dimmesdale that end up hurting him in the end. If Hester truly loved Dimmesdale then she would have warned him about Chillingworth and told him the truth about his identity. Instead, Hester keeps Chillingworth’s secret and greatly affecting the person she claims to truly love; therefore, making her a hypocrite along with Chillingworth and Dimmesdale. Nonetheless, the biggest hypocrite is the townspeople that judge Hester for her sins. Hester believes “ she was terror-stricken by the revolutions that were thus made.What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victims, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze fort on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne’s”(Hawthorne 77)? The people of the Puritan town hid behind Hester even though many of them have sinned, but just haven’t gotten caught. For example, one lady started at the scarlet letter and blushed and then just walked away. She probably had committed the sin of adultery but just never got caught like Hester Prynne had. The sin of hypocrisy is greater than adultery because not everyone commits adultery, but almost everyone at some point in their lives commits the sin of

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