The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Have you ever committed a sin so appalling that you couldn’t tell a single soul, which, in result, gnawed away at the very foundation of passion and ecstasy in your life? The truth is every individual sins at some point. Certain people more than others and some people worse than others. What matters most is how you respond and how you let the emotional wrath of repentance take ahold of your life. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth to symbolize the effects of guilt and how destructive or reinforcing a life full of remorse can be.

Hester Prynne, the wearer of the scarlet letter, conveys a couple of different ways in which guilt can affect individual’s lives for worse and for better. Depending on the emotional depth of the sin and how it affects the society, one of the worst results of sin is the feeling of being an outcast. “Much of the marble coldness of Hester’s impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world,–alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected,–alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even has she not scorned to consider it desirable,–she cast away the fragments of a broken chain.” (Hawthorne 112) In this quote, Hawthorne describes Hester’s emotions of desertion and the ignominy of being alone. For Hester, these sentiments reach a point to where they are almost unbearable. After some time passes, she realizes that in order for her life to continue on, she needs to change the way she is living. “She wanted–what some people want throughout life–a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and mak...

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...ous sin, the wearer of the scarlet letter learns from her mistake and allows her new wisdom to transform her life and to help others escape from the same evil that cut a hole in her soul. Unfortunately Arthur Dimmsedale, for he too has committed the same offence, is not strong enough to fight back against the malicious ignominy, which destroys his spiritual being. Dimmesdale permits his despair to drag him into a life so full of darkness, that it would take a miracle for him to see the light again. As for Chillingworth, he can only hope that his actions can be forgiven by those whose lives he has interfered with. All in all, every person must accept the fact that at one point or another, sin will come knocking on the front door. It is the choice of each individual either to permit that ignominy to teach and transform his life, or to allow it to destroy them.