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Recommended: The interpretation of “the scarlet letter”

Nathaniel Hawthorne exploits the life of Puritanism in his guilty pleasure The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne lends the reader into an insight of life and human nature. The Scarlet Letter reveals the ordeal and evils of Hester Prynne, a woman living in colonial Boston whom was found guilty of adultery. Hester’s punishment was to then wear a visible sign of her sin’ the scarlet letter “A.” As the novel progresses the reader is introduced to Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister Hester had an affair with; and Roger Chillingworth, the estranged husband of Hester whom is out for revenge. The Scarlet Letter examines the relations of the main characters and the consequence of these characters to Hester’s sin. Hester’s sin of adultery interacts with themes of alienation from society, revenge, creativity, and consequences of breaking the moral code. The underlying sin Hawthorn explores throughout The Scarlet Letter is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is easily defines as a falsehood between one's professed beliefs and feelings and one's actual beliefs and feelings, or an application of a criticism to others that one does not apply to oneself. Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the Puritan society were steep in their sin of hypocrisy. Hawthorne reveals through the pages of The Scarlet Letter that hypocrisy is indeed a sin by punishing the offenders.

Hester Prynne is a strong, independent, and stubborn individual who surrenders to hypocrisy throughout The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne accepts the consequences to her action and wears her scarlet letter with pride and envy from the members of her society. However, there is a psychological blockage to Hester’s mind that she has no indeed committed a sin. In the prison, defending her actions against committing...

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...veral bodies in The Scarlet Letter. Though Hester, Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, and the Puritan Society, are filled with hypocrisy, it not only impacts the life of these people, but it also affects the innocent. Pearl, Hester and Dimmesdale daughter, was affected by her parent’s hypocrisy. She was looked upon as an outcast like her mother. Pearl’s interpretations of her mother’s sin taught of how different individuals deal with their sin and guilt. Pearl became Hawthorne’s voice to always be true to yourself and value appearances.

Works Cited

"Hypocrisy | Define Hypocrisy at Dictionary.com." Dictionary.com | Free Online Dictionary for English Definitions. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. .

http://content.loudlit.org/audio/ScarletLetter/pages/17_04_ScarletLetter.htm

http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/scarletletter/3/

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