Forgiveness In Scarlet Letter

The forgiveness of God had given people second chances at life. All people in life can find God in their times of need and repent of their sins. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter, showed his opinion about how God loves eternally no matter what the circumstances were, and is always there for people to fall back on through his characters in his novel. Each character had the same situation, but each developed a different way of handling it. Through God’s forever loving and forgiving nature, Hester and Dimmesdale are able to gain a second chance at life, while Chillingsworth took a path that only leads to darkness and loneliness. Hester Prynne, the main character in the novel The Scarlet Letter, was the most forgiven character

He may have ended up being forgiven by God, but the pain and suffering of keeping his secret slowly killed him. Dimmesdale’s knowledge of his own wrongdoing was like a poison seeping through his veins that could never escape, and he knows that God will forgive him, but is that sincerely what he wants. In his final moments he shouts out, “God knows; and He is merciful! He hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions….Praised be his name! His will be done! Farewell!” (Hawthorne 210), showing that God knows of his sin, and that was the only way that he was going to be forgiven, and oh how Dimmesdale suffered.The retributions he inflicted upon himself were so harsh, but since he was a man of cowardice and fearfulness he could also never admit to anyone that he was the father of Pearl because he knew that adultery was one of the worst sins you could commit. When Hester was on the scaffold for the first time, Dimmesdale had the audacity to stand above her and ask about the father, “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 the pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except to tempt him,- yea, compel him, as it were- to add hypocrisy to sin?”(Hawthorne 58), which in reality is ironic because he is the father of Pearl.

He turned to revenge instead of forgiveness. Chillingsworth was Hester's husband who was away from Hester for almost seven years, came back at in inopportune time, and the first thing he saw was his wife on the scaffold holding a bay. He immediately went to Hester and asked who had done this, and when she refuses to answer he was not very happy with that answer. “I shall seek this man, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine” (Hawthorne 64), Chillingworth's’ rage was indisputable and he had a feeling of enmity towards Dimmesdale. He ended up getting what he wanted by slowly torturing Dimmesdale, but to get this slight satisfaction he had to devote his whole life to destroying someone else's, and that is entirely wrong. God wants everybody to be forgiving, and to be forgiving does not mean you have to like what the person did, and it also does not mean you have to like the person. To forgive means to stop feeling angry towards someone or to pardon them for they have wronged you, and that is not always the easiest choice to make. In the end he might have made it up to Pearl when he gave away all he had and made her wealthy, “At old Roger Chillingworth’s decease