Light In The Scarlet Letter

Sin. Guilt. Secrets and schemes unfold in 17th century Boston as we follow Hester, Arthur, and Roger in The Scarlet Letter. The author of The Scarlet Letter is Nathanial Hawthorn, who finds a story of a tax collector in 1900’s Salem who is bored and decides to look around. He finds a bundle of papers with a scarlet A on the top. He then proceeds to write this book as a historical fiction on puritan society. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne uses the symbols of light and dark to depict good and evil among the characters Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. The author of The Scarlet Letter is Nathanial Hawthorn, who finds a story of a tax collector in 1800’s Salem who is bored and decides to look around, he finds a bundle

The first major character of this story is the deeply darkened and sinful.
Hester has been shown as a character of complexity and an equal amount of sin and righteousness. When Hester throws the scarlet letter away a fantastic example of Hester’s light side is shown. Evidence of this is found in the text when it states that; “All at once with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees” (Hawthorn 51). This instance of light happens when she and Dimmesdale are together in the forest, she throws away the letter and suddenly a gigantic weight is lifted off of her. The scarlet letter seems to be the very embodiment of her sin seeing as how when Hester lets down her hair and tosses the letter she is warmed with the glow of sunshine. Hawthorn wants us to see how Hester is ready to leave behind her sin, and only she

Speaking about the topic of light, when Dimmesdale calls pearl and Hester to him on the scaffold a great light reference is made, “The sun, but little past now its meridian, shone down upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctiveness to his figure, as he stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eternal Justice” (Hawthorn 231). He finally, after the fiasco some nights ago on that same scaffold, calls Pearl and Hester to him so that they can stand together in the sunlight and let go of their dark sins showing that today is going to be his judgement day. He also shows to Pearl that he is finally ready to stand with her and Hawthorn shows us that he is taking responsibility with his failure as a father figure for Pearl. As for the darkness in Arthur’s life he decides to confess to the world his sin he does it when everyone is sleeping, “He felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should descend the steps of the scaffold” (Hawthorne 139). Before he makes that fateful call to Hester and Pearl on the scaffold later in the book, he decides to tell the world his sin … only he does it when the world is dead and no one is awake his sin is still covered with a shroud of darkness only this time by the world not his