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Introduction on The Scarlet Letter
Historical setting of the scarlet letter
Significance of the scarlet letter
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Recommended: Introduction on The Scarlet Letter
The Evil Mistriss Hibbins of The Scarlet Letter
Evil can be defined as, "That which is the reverse of good,
physically or morally; whatever is censurable painful, disastrous, or
undesirable." In the novel "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Mistriss Hibbins can also be defined in those terms. She is believed to be
evil by many of the characters. Henry Louis Mencken once said, "It is a sin
to believe evil of others, but is seldom a mistake." In this novel he was
right, Mistriss Hibbins is evil. However, she is an important character who
appears more often than most people realize and her evilness has a serious
impact on most of the characters.
Mistriss Hibbins represents evil in the novel. She was accused of
being a witch. This is a very evil thing in the eyes of the Puritans.
Mistriss Hibbins can also be said to be evil simply because she is always
in the forest, which is an evil place. She is said to go on "night rides"
and attend witch meetings there. "And Mistriss Hibbins, with some twigs of
the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having
hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride."
The people in town are scared to even be near Mistriss Hibbins. At
the last scaffold scene, "The crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear
the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous
folds." Here, it says that the townspeople were so scared, that they
thought her evil was contagious.
Mistriss Hibbins also effects the way some of the characters think
in the novel. In one part of the novel, Mistriss Hibbins tells Pearl, the
daughter of Hester Prynne, that Dimmesdale, who is her father, is the
"Prince of Air". "They say, child, though art of the lineage of the Prince
of Air!" In this quote she was telling Pearl that Dimmesdale is the devil.
Pearl gets influenced by her and believes her father is the devil. In one
scaffold scene, Pearl yells out, "Mistriss Hibbins says my father is the
Prince of Air. If though callest me that ill-name, I shall tell him of thee,
and he will chase thy ship with a tempest.
Pearl is an example of the innocent result of sin. All the kids make fun of Pearl and they disclude her from everything. She never did anything wrong, but everyone treats her like she committed the sin also. Pearl acts out against the children that make fun of her and acts like a crazy child. She cannot control the sins that her parents committed.
Witchcraft was anything considered as “the act of invoking spiritual powers to accomplish a supernatural task", such as telling the future (The Salem Witch Trials: A Reference Guide). However what defined a witch soon became ambiguous; people would accuse someone of witchcraft if said person was talking to themselves or had the witch’s mark, which was often just a mole (The Salem Witch Trials: A Reference Guide). Witches were severely feared because they were thought to be serviceable to the devil. Puritans believed the devil had supernatural powers similar to those of God’s and he would use his powers for selfish sadistic intentions. Puritans believed Satan was active and walking among the earth, and he would attempt to recruit witches to serve him. Puritans were petrified of this possibility because Satan can only be constantly looking to wreak havoc (The Salem Witch Trials: A Reference Guide). Soon people commenced witch hunts and accused witches and wizards were incarcerated and put on
...n idea about the human psyche and the nature of evil. Throughout the novels, we have acts that were dubbed as evil. Some of these were: the acts of the rabbi’s son, the killing of Simon, and even the joy Eliezer felt at the death of his father. All of these points and the many that weren’t mentioned all shared a singular idea. It was that the ulterior motive of these acts revolved around people reacting on instinct and desire. From these, we gain the final message of the novel that was proven time and time again. This message was that evil isn’t an act that just isn’t moral. Evil is the primal, instinctual, an animalistic rage that lives in the darker part of our heart, a part of the heart that is brought to light upon the moment the chains of civilization are broken..... A moment where we fall prey to our instincts and our conscience disappears into the darkness.
In Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the deceptive Roger Chillingworth could most certainly be considered a morally ambiguous character. Throughout the novel, Roger Chillingworth everlastingly remains misleading as to whether he lies on the side of good or evil. Even at the end of The Scarlet Letter, the knowledge of Roger Chillingworth is extremely nebulous. The mysterious Roger Chillingworth, although ultimately emanating to be evil, attests to be a challenge when determining his morality. Roger Chillingworth attempts to beguile us by enacting the role of a physician, and ensconces his relationship with Hester Prynne. He lives with Arthur Dimmesdale, vindicating that he is serving Arthur Dimmesdale a helpful medicine, while he is actually depleting the very life from his bones. Roger Chillingworth, therefore, achieves his moral ambiguity through deception, cleverness, and an unknown history.
letter *A* embroidered on her chest. The A served as a symbol of her crime, was
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is one of the most respected and admired novels of all time. Often criticized for lacking substance and using more elaborate camera work, freely adapted films usually do not follow the original plot line. Following this cliché, Roland Joffe’s version of The Scarlet Letter received an overwhelmingly negative reception. Unrealistic plots and actions are added to the films for added drama; for example, Hester is about to be killed up on the scaffold, when Algonquin members arrive and rescue her. 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.
One of the main themes in The Scarlet Letter is that of the secret. The plot of the book is centered on Hester Prynne’s secret sin of adultery. Nathaniel Hawthorne draws striking parallelism between secrets held and the physical and mental states of those who hold them. The Scarlet Letter demonstrates that a secret or feeling kept within slowly engulfs and destroys the soul such as Dimmesdale’s sin of hypocrisy and Chillingworth’s sin of vengeance, while a secret made public, such as Prynne’s adultery, can allow a soul to recover and even strengthen.
The Scarlet Letter illustrates that the illumination of self-deception gapes open after one like the very jaws of hell. This is apparent through all the main characters of the novel. Although Hawthorne's work has several imperfect people as the main characters, including Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, the worst sinner is Roger Chillingworth. Chillingworth commits the greater sin because of his failure to forgive; he has an insatiable appetite for revenge; he receives extreme pleasure in torturing Dimmesdale. Hester Prynne, however, has committed sins of almost the same magnitude.
At first it is seen as a story about man and the evils he can do, yet
The evil nature of this individual is made manifest, and thus evil enters the story in a significant way.
Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde characterized evil as pervasive and cruel. Yet each author had his own specific interpretation. For Stoker, evil was tangible. A person could see it with their eyes and touch it with their hands. Wilde saw evil as illusory, any act, no matter how innocuous ran the risk of becoming something outside anyone’s control. Garrard’s regards “evil acts are ones which produce an enormous amount of disvalue in
Enlightenment or The Age of Reason occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries, and lasted for 130 years. The Enlightenment period can be divided into three parts, the Early Enlightenment, the High Enlightenment and the Late. It was brought about by a group of intellectual thinkers, who began challenging the status quo. The broad movement of Enlightenment began in Europe and gradually spread until it reached the U.S. This time in history sometimes overlaps with the Scientific Revolution because many of the philosophers and their ideas used the scientific method to explain life. Enlightenment challenged the religious views of the day, as well as absolutist rule. Three ideals came from the humanists, today’s liberals, that supported The Age of Enlightenment; individualism, skepticism, and reason. Several developments in the late 17th century contributed to the period of Early Enlightenment. The two most important ones are the political hostility to absolutist rule and the religious clashes between
The Enlightenment was the period lasting from the mid-seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century in which, thought and culture led to brilliant revolutions in science, society, politics, and philosophy. People living in this time often referred to it as the “Age of Reason”. During this time a contemporary western culture developed and was a precursor to the beginning of our ever-expanding technological and political world. This era brought representative government, an aura of freedom, and belief that people could better human existence. The Enlightenment idea was partially taken from John Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”.
"The Enlightenment was a desire for human affairs to be guided by rationality than by faith, superstition, or revelation; a belief in the power of human reason to change society and liberate the individual from the restraints of custom or arbitrary authority; all backed up by a world view increasingly validated by science rather than by religion or tradition." (Outram 1995)
The Enlightenment was a cultural movement of reasoning and intellect which began in the late 17th century in Europe emphasizing individualism and reasoning rather than tradition. The purpose of this movement was to modify society and apply reasoning to challenge the ideals of faith and tradition and advance the traditional knowledge through the scientific method. This stimulated scientific reasoning and thought as well as human thought. This enabled inte...