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Essay On The Outcast And The Devil In The Scarlet Letter '

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his novel, The Scarlet Letter, combines the archetypes of the Outcast and the Devil in Hester Prynne, while also developing a new mentor/initiate relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale to show the pitfalls of accommodation to authority versus free thought.
In Chapters 17 and 18, Hester Prynne embodies the Devil not as the evil adversary of heaven seen in Christian cosmology, but as the temptress toward freedom, even against the wishes and conventions of the surrounding society. Outside of Christianity, the devil figure represents temptation, freedom, personal power, new and daring thought, and, in its association with death, great change. As a result of her freedom of speculation remarked upon in previous chapters, Hester is able to suggest that she and Mr. Dimmesdale “leave it all behind” (pg. 155), which, to the rule-following …show more content…

However, Hester’s “seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a preparation for this very hour” (pg. 158), against the hopes of the Puritans who gave her that punishment. Instead of making her eager to serve her penance and regain the status of Respectable Member of Puritan Society, banishment made “the outcast” into “the devil”, by releasing her from the narrow confines of Puritan thought and giving her the opportunity to develop ideas and principles directly contrary to it.
Hester as the Devil also tempts Dimmesdale with the opportunity to “undo it all” (pg. 159), giving rise to the theme of conflict between individualism and conformity. Hester, as the Devil, trusts herself to know what is right, and the fact that her definition of right is different from her surrounding society’s definition of right doesn’t affect her or make her doubt herself. However, Dimmesdale, nestled deep within the Puritan line of thinking, “had never gone

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To begin, Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes pathos throughout his writing to imprint the importance of individual conscience into the reader 's mind. Hawthorne begins the book by having the reader pity the main character, Hester Prynne, as she is a young, husbandless, mother in a society that shames her for her unfortunate circumstances: “haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung in the street for them all to spurn and trample upon” (Hawthorne, 53). The consistent misfortune of Prynne evokes emotion in the reader and stresses the weight of her decisions. Prynne manages her way through such a hostile society -“Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly on your bosom” (Hawthorne, 188)- in a way that is metaphorically applicable to the real world, allowing the reader to truly connect and understand the character for who they are.

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