The Truth About the Sinner In D.H. Lawrence’s essay “On the Scarlet Letter,” Lawrence discusses how he believes that Hester Prynne, the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, is evil and her sin of committing adultery is the cause of the novel’s problem. He states that Hester causes many problems in the novel by seducing Arthur Dimmesdale and bringing his whole life down. D.H. Lawrence achieves his purpose of showing Hester as evil and the source of the problem by using passionate hyperboles to exaggerate her sin, exuberant syntax to repeat himself, and a sarcastic tone to emphasize how evil she is. Lawrence uses passionate hyperboles to exaggerate Hester’s sin in the novel in order to show his audience that she is evil for committing the sin of adultery and taking down her lover, Dimmesdale. In his essay, Lawrence states that Hester is a “demon” and that “a man must be pure, just that you can seduce him to fall.” He is explicitly calling Hester a demon because of how …show more content…
He states, “and the first thing she does is to seduce him. And the first thing he does is to be seduced.” “She” refers to Hester and “he” refers to Dimmesdale. He only refers to them as “he” and “she” because by doing this, he is able to keep the sentences short in order to quickly get to his point. Also by starting each of those sentences with “and the first thing,” he shows that although Dimmesdale allows himself to be seduced, it all comes back to Hester seducing him in the first place. Lawrence frequently uses choppy sentences throughout his essay such as, “All begins with A. Abel, Adam. A. America. The Scarlet Letter.” Many of these sentences only consist of one word and by doing this, Lawrence is able to make his essay feel fast-paced so his audience can see his points quickly and easily which in turn, will make them agree with