Forgiveness In The Scarlet Letter

Forgiveness and It’s Results In the novel The Scarlet Letter written by Hawthorne there are four main characters, Hester Prynne, Pearl Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale. They each have to come face to face with being able to forgive someone or themselves. Some were able to forgive, like Pearl Prynne but others like Roger Chillingworth could not forgive. Different outcomes occurred for each character. One Person who had to deal with forgiveness in The Scarlet Letter was Chillingworth, forgiveness was not something he was capable of doing. He had to decide whether or not he should exonerate Dimmesdale, who in fact was the man who made his wife, Hester Prynne, pregnant. In the novel, it is clear that Chillingworth never will

She needs to determine whether or not she can forgive herself for committing adultery and letting Chillingworth torment Dimmesdale throughout the course of seven years without him knowing Chillingworth's true identity. Throughout the course of the novel Hester is not able to forgive herself for committing adultery. Hester’s inability to forgive herself is seen when the article says Hester, “ Struggled to believe that no fellow mortal was guilty like herself” (Wagenknecht 65). Something authenticated is that Hester’s inner struggle comes to an end. She arrives at the decision that she cannot forgive herself for letting Chillingworth inflict misery on Dimmesdale for seven years. We are presented with this in The Scarlet Letter when it states, “ Hester could not but ask herself, whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and loyalty on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be forboded and nothing auspicious to be hoped” (Hawthorne 183). Hester's inability to rest peacefully is due to her ongoing feeling of disgrace for what happened between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. As punishment, she chose to return to her cottage where everything first began and live her life wearing the scarlet letter. This shows her lacking ability to forgive