...Guilt, Self-condemnation, and Secrecy In The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne reveals that while guilt and secrecy will ultimately have a negative effect on your life, guilt and secrecy can also make you a better person for a short while. Dimmesdale is the reverend of the town, and he is also the man Hester had an affair with. While Dimmesdale forces himself to keep his affair a secret, “the health of Mr. Dimmesdale [has] evidently begun to fail” because the self-condemnation and guilt he is bestowing upon himself is eating him alive (Hawthorne 99). Dimmesdale’s health is failing to the self-condemnation he is bestowing upon himself. Hawthorne is trying to convey to the reader that they usually judge themselves more harshly than anyone else would probably judge them. However, the guilt and self-condemnation has also had a positive effect on Dimmesdale too. Because of the affair, Dimmesdale has become a better reverend in that he is “devot[ed] to study, … scrupulous[ly] fulfill[s] parochial duty, and … fasts” (99). Dimmesdale’s guilt has caused him to focus on his religion, for he feels that he can fix the sin he has committed if he focuses on being a good Christian. Because of his serious devotion to religion, many believed that they were “not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet” (100). Dimmesdale’s secrecy and guilt has cause the town to love him even more as a reverend. They are able to connect with Dimmesdale because they feel like he can actually understand their sin. Throughout...
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...The Scarlet Letter, is far more complex than some simple morality tale about Hester Prynne's public shaming at the hands of the Puritan community in 1640's Massachusetts Bay. One of the big topics in this book is guilt. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of the scarlet letter, the scaffold, and Dimmesdale. Hawthorne shows us that the scarlet 'A', (which Hester wears to single her out as an adulteress and sinner), is really just a token of her humanity. Because the truth is that we all have our secret sins. It is just that Hester's sin was caught, while most of the rest of us writhe beneath the guilt of secret shame. And it is this hidden guilt which eats Hester's lover, Reverend Dimmesdale, alive. Guilt and Redemption; Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale experience very different life trajectories after their affair. Hester's pregnancy with her much beloved daughter pearl is a direct coralarion with guilt for pearl was conceived with a man who wasn’t Hesters’ husband. Her husband has been missing and presumed dead for years. Poor Dimmesdale’ life started to “dim” at the very time and moment he saw pearl with Hester standing on the scaffold. It was his first time seeing her since pearl was concieved. But Hester's lover and Pearl's father,...
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... 29 November 2014 Power of Guilt In modern society, concealing guilt is often given a negative connotation, however, the implications that are associated with guilt and sins are human creations. Guilt, the result of shameful mistakes, is associated with infirmity, cowardice, and self-centeredness due to the fear of exposure. These three mesmerizing works, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Pie” by Gary Soto and, “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, address the theme of guilt and the consequences of concealing one’s guilt. The Scarlet Letter considered one of the most famous of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, is set in the1850s in Boston, Massachusetts. The plot revolves around a Puritan community and a woman named Hester. “The Pie”, written in Fresno, California in 1991, is an autobiographical narrative that illustrates Soto’s sin when he steals a pie from the grocery store and experiences the feeling of guilt along with a few other consequences. “The Crucible” was written in 1953 and exposes the truths about the Salem Witchcraft trials, in Massachusetts. Ultimately, through their respective protagonists’ acts of aggression and violations of boundaries, authors Hawthorne, Soto, and Miller illustrate that the guilt derived from sin itself, especially if concealed from society, can cause emotional and mental torture, leading to everlasting internal punishment, and an increase in remorseful feelings. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne depicts the consequences of...
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...The Scarlet Letter, a book of guilt and confession, shows the effect of guilt through Dimmesdale and Hester. Hawthorne illustrates the awful effects of guilt, and freedom through confession. The book can either be seen as a comparison of suppressing or admitting sin, or of Hester and Dimmesdale. The ideas of keeping in and openly admitting sin contrast each other. Guilt is only in society, and cannot be seen in the forest. Society does play a major role on guilt, but guilt is only torturous if kept in secret. Arthur Dimmesdales torture from his guilt comes from his secrecy. The pain from guilt is a universal feeling. Guilty know their wrongdoing and it eats them away. Society has rules and laws to abide by that if broken makes a person feel...
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...The Scarlet Letter In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, A young woman named Hester Prynne in Boston is prosecuted for adultery. To symbolize her crime, she has an “A” imprinted on her bosom. As a result of her committing adultery, she and Reverend Dimmesdale (his identity is not identified until later in the book) have a child. She is a very curious child, and her name is Pearl. Roger Chillingworth, comes to see Hester on the scaffold and he doesn’t want his identity revealed either but it does get revealed in later chapters. In the Scarlet letter, the author uses different symbols, literary devices, and themes that help Nathaniel’s purpose of writing. Symbolism A symbol in the Scarlet Letter is literally the Scarlet Letter...
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...through Hester’s eyes as Pearl looks up at her mother, “It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl was a human child” (86). Pearl is a human child and like most human children, she has tantrums and fits and she gets angry and sad. Only to Hester, is Pearl fearsome and inhuman and it is her guilt that transforms Pearl. Only a guilt-ridden mind could use this one look to transform Pearl into something that is beyond human. Hester is...
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...The Character of Pearl Pearl is a major character in the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Even though she is a young child through most of the book, she plays a very important role. Pearl asks many different questions throughout the text that make the adult characters even question themselves. She is more perceptive and more honest than anyone in the rest of the book. Without Pearl, “The Scarlet Letter” would not be as successful as it is. Pearl is supposed to be an average child, but she is also there to help us realize things we might not have seen on our own, and to symbolize sin and guilt. When we first meet Pearl, most of us realized that there was definitely something special about this little girl. She has a special insight into things in the book that I would have never noticed without Pearl. Hawthorne uses Pearl in a special way to reveal that Dimmesdale has something to do with the scarlet letter. Pearl is not used to being around a lot of people, so when she accepted Dimmesdale so openly it helped the readers realize who he truly was. It says “Pearl, that wild and unpredictable little elf, crept over to him. She took his hand in both of hers and laid her cheek against it.” (92) This is a kindness that most little girls would only share with a family member, such as their father. There is also other information that Pearl gives to reveal to us that she knows who her father truly is. When Hester and Pearl come across Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale on the...
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...Things are not always what they seem. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter uses the central idea of duality to exemplify this. A key symbol of duality Hawthorne presents in The Scarlet Letter is Hester Prynne's embodiment of her sin: the beautifully embroidered scarlet letter. Forcibly placed upon Hester's bosom, the letter punishes her for committing adultery with the town reverend, Arthur Dimmesdale. The badge also intends to outcast her and her daughter, Pearl, from the Puritan society of Boston. Although the "A" originally acted as Hester's punishment, the interpretation of the scarlet letter varies for Dimmesdale and Pearl to juxtapose Hester's unwavering perspective. Besides Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale has the biggest personal...
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...The impossible became possible in The Scarlet Letter, a story set back in the Puritan Times. In this response, I will give my reactions in writing to different aspects of the novel;the characchters, my likes and dislikes, my questions, and my opinion of the harsh Puritain lifestyle. Hester Prynne, the Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth each suffered guilt in their own way in the novel The Scarlet Letter. In the beginning of the novel, Hester Prynne should have not suffered the way she did on the scaffold alone. She was forced to be intergated by the high-officials of the town, while holding her little Pearl in arms. Making matters worse, the father of the child was in that very group of officals. She was then sentenced to wear the scarlet letter "A", showing her guilt "externally". Unable to take it off, she was forced to show her guilt to the entire settlement. However, the Reverend Dimmesdale suffered "internally", with a scarlet letter of his own engraved in his mind, and on his chest as well. He felt like he betrayed God, and beat himself in a frenzy to prove his wrongdoing. He often questioned wheather his authority was true or not. Roger Chillingworth suffered the least, because he only failed to reveal the secret that he knew, the father of the child who Hester Prynne was forced to live with. This small restriction to his life forced him to suffer "internally". I had different likes and dislikes in the novel The Scarlet Letter. There were many things that needed...
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...A woman stands in front of her community, judged for her sin and having an object to show it, her only child. Born from an extramarital affair with an unknown man, she is forced to face public scrutiny in a Puritan community. Somewhere in the crowd, the father of the child stands, guilty but not judged. Nathaniel Hawthorne tackles sin and shame in The Scarlet Letter, a story showing guilt and transgression in a society where “religion and law were almost identical” and “the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful” (Hawthorne 47-48). The heritage of Nathaniel Hawthorne, common beliefs held by the Puritans, as well as Hawthorne’s philosophies on secret sin and public shame affect the style of The...
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...humiliated, or feeling guilty for an action that you did, or completing a conquest for oneself? Well, the scaffold scenes are some of the most important scenes that occur in The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. These scenes provide insight as to how much of a significant factor the scaffold was in Puritan society. In puritan society, the scaffold was used as a symbol for one’s sin. In The Scarlet Letter, there are three different scenes that occur at the scaffold at different times during the book. All of the book's main characters are present in each of these scenes; Hester Prynne, Pearl, Arthur Dimmesdale, as well as Roger Chillingworth. Along with these characters being present, so is the novel's primary symbol, the scarlet letter. In The Scarlet Letter, even though the scarlet letter was the main symbol, the scaffold portrays...
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...Marcelo Neto US History Hon Mr. Hershaw 11/15/2012 The Scarlet Letter By Nathanial Hawtorne Summary The Scarlet Letter opens with a long chapter explaining how the book came to be written. The narrator was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts, where the novel takes place. In the customhouse’s attic, he finds a number of documents, among them a manuscript that was bundled with a scarlet patch in the shape of an “A.” The manuscript detailed events that occurred some two hundred years before the narrator’s time. When the narrator lost his customs post, he decided to write a fictional account of the events recorded in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter is the final product. The novel begins in the seventeenth-century Boston, when Hester is briefly released from prison so that she can be paraded through town, displaying her scarlet "A" embroided on her chest while standing on top of the town scaffold. She carries her baby daughter, Pearl, in her arms. After being Hester steadfastly refuses to reveal the name of Pearl’s father, so that he might be saved from punishment. Hester Prynne’s long lost husband arrives in the midst of this parade through town. He visits her in prison before her release and asks her not to tell anyone that he’s in town. His plan is to disguise himself so that he can ferret out...
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...let others judge and make their own assumptions. However, in The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main character, Hester Prynne does the exact opposite as she openly shows her acceptance of her sin through the scarlet “A”, and Pearl. Pearl symbolizes Hester’s wrong doing. She is a constant and permanent punishment for Hester’s sin. A quote that shows Pearl’s symbolization is on page 74. “A lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion.” This quote basically is saying that Pearl is like a beautiful, eternal flower, from the foul indulgence of her mother’s guilty passion. The scarlet “A” is also a symbol of Hester’s wrong doing. Hester is forced to wear the “A” on her chest for the rest of her life to stand as a reminder to her, and the rest of the community of her sin, adultery, which is what the “A” stands for. “On the breast of her gown, its fine red cloth, surrounded with elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread” (46) describes what the “A” looks like. By wearing the scarlet letter every day, Hester has full and complete control of her sin. Removing the letter would mean society has power over her. Most people would move away after their sentence, if they were allowed so they could have a fresh start and meet new people and start a new life. However Prynne decided to stay in town and wear the scarlet “A” she made while she was in prison. The letter shows her acceptance and proves to everyone that she doesn’t care...
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...Dimmesdale massive amounts of guilt and internal suffering. He was emotionally tortured and driven to the verge of insanity to preserve his place in society. When Hester Prynne was publicly shamed in chapters one and two the entire town found out about her sin. Dimmesdale was extremely guilty that Hester went through the humiliation alone. He wanted Boston to know his part in the affair but also did not want his parish to reject his teachings. Reverend Dimmesdale was...
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...battle throughout the Scarlet Letter. Chillingworth, a man of noble purpose and strong dispositions, falls further and further into his obsession of revenge. While at the same time, Dimmesdale, a respected reverend, suffers mentally and physically from his affair with Hester Prynne. As we progress through the novel, a question materializes: who deserves the blame for Hester Prynne’s affair, Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, or Hester Prynne herself? All three main characters believe they hold some sort of responsibility for the affair between Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale. Ultimately, Hester Prynne wrongs both Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale. Mrs. Prynne’s sin led to Roger Chillingworth’s and Arthur Dimmesdale’s demise both mentally and physically. Arthur Dimmesdale, a religious man respected by the community, ironically has an affair with Hester Prynne. Dimmesdale understands the sin he commits. He realizes all too well that he must confess publicly, but he cannot bring himself to do so. Instead, he begs Hester to announce what he has done: Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except tempt him…(64). Dimmesdale feels nothing but shame for falling into temptation with Hester. He wants to expel his guilt publicly, but he...
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