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Themes in the scarlet letter
Themes in the scarlet letter
Themes in the scarlet letter
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Themes in the scarlet letter
Themes in the scarlet letter
Themes in the scarlet letter
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Humans have a tendency to conform and often neglect the potential consequences of doing so. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author introduces those consequences through a respected clergyman and sinner named Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale struggles with his guilty conscience and cowardice to confess his sin which prompts him to abide by societal rules but question himself in private. Dimmesdale’s conflict between outward conformity and inward questioning contributes to the novel’s message that everybody must confront their sins or they will fall victim to some form of retribution.
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.
Essay 2 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic tale, The Scarlet Letter, is an excellent piece of literature with many plot twists. In the beginning of the story the reader meets Hester, who is one of the main characters in the story. The reader soon learns that she has committed adultery and has received the scarlet letter,an identifying mark put on someone who has committed adultery, in front of the town. Once she has received that letter, her husband, Roger Chillingworth, who she thought was captured, shows up and finds her. Chillingworth quickly becomes the town doctor and soon seeks revenge to the one who committed adultery with Hester.
In 1964, Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist introduced the idea that humans evolved through different stages of morality. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne male characters exemplify a moral development as the story unfolds. In particular, Arthur Dimmesdale’s morality differs from the beginning of the novel to the ending of the novel. His morality undergoes continuity and change by constantly changing from selfishness, social order, and social contract. Dimmesdale undergoes the morality maintaining the social order and being considerate of others to eventually being selfish and only thinks about himself.
In the article “Three Orders: Natural, Moral and Symbolic” by Hyatt Howe Waggoner analyzes how three of the main importances of “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne are natural, moral, and symbolic components of the story. “The Scarlet Letter” is a figurative novel that has a lot of comparisons to the natural, moral, and symbolic pieces of the Puritan community. Hawthorne uses several different items to represent natural, moral and symbolic pieces in his novel. Waggoner’s article shows that Chillingworth is closely in relation to the weeds and black flowers in the cemetery, the letter Hester wears around her chest is close in relation to the red rose, and Pearl is exceedingly close in relation to the wild rose bush next to the prison.
Naturally Dreadful Nature is the basic characteristic into which something or someone is naturally presented. These characteristics are used in this novel as the scars into which no one is able to escape. Nature in The Scarlet Letter was used as a representation of many ideas and beliefs the puritan society tried to suppress. These representations came throughout the development of the novel as Hester’s escapement and can even be argued that Hawthorne used nature to show the violent and demonic sides of the puritan’s angst. As the story begins, the tension between the colonist and the unknown adulterer grow with the signs of mockery.
(Hawthorne 148). She made herself a reliable person to her community, and by doing this, she redeemed herself from her sin. Humans eventually fall from grace. How they respond to this can either strengthen their character or lead them to ruin. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne vividly portrays the different ways people can deal with their failures.
However, he also uses these allusions to create a new side to his narrative as evident when he describes Hester’s resilience, and to create a new element in the plot as evident in his description of Dimmesdale’s penance and need for redemption. Therefore, Hawthorne demonstrates an effective use of allusions to craft a religious and detailed narrative for The Scarlet Letter by reviewing on parallels between the Bible and the novel’s main characters. There’s more to The Scarlet Letter than these allusions though, and there are many questions to answer about this book. These questions may never be answered fully, but by reading the novel itself, we might find the right places to start searching for answers and formulate our own opinions on the matter. What’s important from this novel is the realistic warning about what might happens when an individual place themselves too highly among others, a message Hawthorne writes to warn against the fervor of transcendentalism of his time.
On the threshold of this “tale of human frailty and sorrow,” Nathaniel Hawthorne opens his novel with an unusual approach; he closely examines a prison door and all of its suggestive qualities (36). In Chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne creates a paradoxical, ambiguous, and complex mood through the use of an ominous tone, symbolism, and allusion. By standing at the prison door, the reader stands between puritanical confinement and feminine freedom. Chapter 1 opens with a description of the prison door that engenders a foreboding feeling through connotative imagery and negative diction. Hawthorne depicts the prison door as being “heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes” (35).
Society is based on how groups of people relate to each other in a community. At many points in time, all of the characters prove the fact that Nature also expresses their feelings. Theodore Roethke once said "Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley. " This quote best relates to The Scarlet Letter because all of the characters make their own paths to succeed and show the readers who they are for themselves. Nathaniel Hawthorne makes the reader
Never the less, it left him unable to see the good in anything or anyone. He lived out his life with Faith in misery, suspicious of everyone he thought he once knew including his beloved wife. At the same time as Goodman Brown’s beliefs are stunned, Hawthorne aims for the reader to question their own way of thinking. Can we really trust the trustworthy and are good people actually as they appear to be, or do we all have some sort of concealed
His most notable work is the “Scarlet Letter” in which he wrote in 1850 is known for its psychological exploration of the themes of sin, repentance, and morality (online literature). I believe that Hawthorne deserves to be put into the lineup of literature we address in this class because of his significant impact on the Romantic period and the idea that there is a dark side of humanity that can be expressed through literature. In order for an author to have a significant impact on society and have provided literature that can be taught to others he must be able to meet numerous amount of standards for his work. These standards include the ability to influence fellow authors, leaving a lasting legacy on society and be able to be interpreted by
The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, functions as an evaluation of Puritan ideas, customs, and culture during the 17th century. Through this evaluation, we can get a good idea of what core values and beliefs the Puritans possessed, as well as the actions they take in cases of adversity brought about by “sinners”. Some Puritan virtues created stark divisions between groups of people, some of which led to discrimination under certain circumstances. One of the most prominent of these is the treatment and standards of men and women, a concept that surfaced during some of the major points in The Scarlet Letter. The divisions that were created by Puritan standards of men and women played a great role in shaping the plot of The Scarlet Letter, determining the fate of many of the characters.
Something so small can alter someone’s psychological nature. During the time of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, Hester and Pearl did not have the things many people used today to treat these disorders and diseases. Pearl, Hester, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth all obtain some sort of these disorder that transforms their characters into something that causes uproar throughout the community. Hawthorne portrays the psychological nature of the novel through the development of anxiety, mood, depression and psychotic disorders in the four main characters. Pearl, Hester, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth.
In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne effectively conforms to the conventions of the gothic genre for the purpose of characterizing the Puritan society as oppressive, portraying the hypocrisy found within the society and highlighting the consequences for not confessing