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Rhetorical Devices Used In Scarlet Letter

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In the novel The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the protagonist is found guilty of adultery after spending time prison her only other punishment is to wear the letter A for the rest of her life and stand on a raised platform for three hours. Hester is out in the open, in front of society standing there on the platform. For that three hours many fingers were pointed and many whispers filled the air. In that time Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale delivers a sermon convincing Hester Prynne to speak the name of her lover. Dimmesdale uses rhetorical devices to help him get the name out of her such as rhetorical question, where he questions what good does keeping the name from the public get her; pathos, arousing her emotions;and finally the …show more content…

“What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him— yea, compel him, as it were — to add hypocrisy to sin?” After the different approaches Dimmesdale brought forward to the community, she is being asked to reveal his name by asking what does she get from adding on to the sin. How does her hiding the name save him, from a sin he has already done? He tried in every way to get it out of her. He asks why was it okay for her lover to perform the adultery, do the sin, but then suddenly not okay for him to take on the punishment with her in front of the community. So by the end Dimmesdale’s argument into convincing Hester is, it is okay to tell the society that one name of who her lover is. There is not going to be a punishment greater than what is already given as it stands; she is only going to be one step closer to salvation. 
 The second rhetorical device used by Dimmesdale was pathos. Pathos is the arousing of emotions and in Hester’s case fear was the emotion being stirred up. Dimmesdale thinks that this “earthly punishment will thereby be more effectual to salvation,” because she will be freeing herself from the guilt of who he is but also bring her closer to Heaven than Hell, once everyone knows who he was. Dimmesdale wasn’t referring to the fact that, if she tells her punishment will be reduces. Instead he is pointing out that her hiding the name is only “adding to the hypocrisy,” and that if she choices to tell the name she would get that much closer to being in heaven in her

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The Scarlet Letter Chapters 1-6 Response Journal Chapter one The Prison Door sets the mood of the novel. It describes how the founders of the Puritan colony knew there would be crime so they built a prison. It can be inferred that the mood is cruel because of how everything in the jail is described. “The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else on the world” (Hawthorne, 41).

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In D.H. Lawrence's critical essay “On the Scarlet Letter,” Hester Prynne is portrayed as Dimmesdale’s seducer. Hester Prynne is described as a “demon” and as the “greatest nemesis of woman” because she committed adultery. D.H. Lawrence focuses his essay around her sin rather than the consequences resulting from her sin. In order to display his purpose in a successful manner, he uses colloquial diction that involves repetition, terse syntax, and biblical and mythological allusions that stimulate ideas through imagery.

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Sin is an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law. Despite the moral principles recognized in everyone, it is so often that individuals succumb to the instant gratification of sin. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the plot is centered around a group of Puritans living in Boston Massachusetts, where the avoidance of sin is one of their most absolute doctrines. He truly captures how sin affects individuals in a strict civilization through the use of various rhetorical devices, focusing on the symbolism of the characters, the distinct tone employed to convey specific messages, and the analogies further that emphasize and develop the effects of sin on individuals.

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Mentally, his guilt strains his mind, which causes his physical deterioration, and the weakening of his body. As Dimmesdale finally admits his sin to the townspeople, his guilt is lifted, and he is able to release himself from his captivity. Though he deteriorated both mind and body from his guilt, by telling the townspeople of his sin, it was as if “a spell was broken” (238). He no longer needed to force himself to hide his sin, which was what was hurting him. By finally dealing with his sin in a similar way to Hester, Dimmesdale was able to free himself of his self-imposed captivity and

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Then, and there, before the judgment seat, thy mother, and thou, and I must stand together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!" (Hawthrone 277). This reply Dimmesdale gives to pearl when she asks him why he cannot stay with his mother and her together shows that even though Dimmesdale feels guilt and wants to make things right with Pearl and Hester. However, he still has a constant fear of what the public would think of him and the fear of losing his position in the church/society.

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Dimmesdale truthfully wants and feels the need to reveal his sins, however because he is afraid of the backlash, he cannot. Afterwards he goes on to argue how there is “ ‘no power short of the Divine mercy’ “ that could reveal the secrets hidden in someone’s heart (123). Due to Dimmesdale’s profession of ministry he believes that divine powers are the only ones who can reveal secrets. The Divine mercy is this higher power that nothing can compare to, and its power is so immense that it is the only way to get a secret revealed from someone's heart. Dimmesdale also tells Chillingworth that many men may choose not to confess their sins because they don’t want to be “ ‘displaying themselves black and filthy’ “ (124) as in Puritan society, many things were considered sins, and sinning was the worst thing that could possibly be done.

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Dimmesdale's guilt overtakes him. With the stress from the congregation viewing him as someone who is "holier-than-thou", and Mr. Chillingworth bating him, he becomes conflicted with his feelings of sinfulness and feels the need to keep this a secret from the congregation. The more his guilt overtakes him, the better his sermons got. Because he is so overwhelmed with remorse and shame his sermons have become famous. he connects more with the audience because he believes that he is more sinful than they are.

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Dimmesdale should have come clean right at the start but he instead he covered it up and this opens a door for people to use it against you if they find out. This happens in to Dimmesdale when Chillingworth who at the time was Hester’s ex-husband and Dimmesdale’s doctor, he finds out that his suspicions were right about Dimmesdale being the person that was involved in the affair with Hester when he finds the letter A written on his chest. This opens a door for

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First, Dimmesdale’s sin getting revealed was foreshadowed and it sounded as if it had to be revealed in a certain way. While Dimmesdale was with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold, Pearl asked if he would stand with them the next day. To this he said, “Nay, not so, my little Pearl, not so my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow” (Hawthorne 99). If Dimmesdale was not worried about what the public would think once he revealed his sin, then he would have just stood their the next day and revealed it then.

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Irony in Dimmesdale’s Speech In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a woman named Hester Prynne committed adultery, resulting in a child in her Puritan community in the mid seventeenth century. Hester persistently denied the townspeople the name of the man who shares her guilt. This man, named Arthur Dimmesdale, given the hypocritical task to convince Hester to speak his very name often speaks ironically, with many double meanings.

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When Dimmesdale states it “burns in secret”, he is using a metaphor to describe how the guilt from his hidden sin is burning inside him and ruining his life. The guilt isn't literally burning inside of him, but the author uses figurative language here to describe the severity in which Dimmesdale's emotions are in. This guilt has progressive gotten worse the longer Dimmesdale has kept it in and the only thing he can do is reveal it. Lastly, Dimmesdale describes people struggling with guilt, while truly describing himself, as he states, “They go about among their fellow creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow; while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves” p 91. Although Dimmesdale is describing to Chillingworth what happens to people who struggling with guilt and sin, he is truly describing himself and what is happening to him.

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Similarly to Pastor Hooper, although he was not physically isolated, Arthur Dimmesdale’s internal struggle regarding his sin was able to seclude him from the rest of society. He had a different state of mind compared to everyone else due to his inability to confess his adulterous sin. Hawthorne also shows the struggles he went through and the perceptions others had of him which made it harder for him to confess. In Chapter 3, “The Recognition,” regarding Dimmesdale, Reverend John Wilson states “‘But he opposes to me that it were wronging the very nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart’s secrets in such broad daylight, and in presence of so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to convince him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of it forth’” (63).

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Hawthorne uses symbolism throughout the Scarlet letter to display the sin and indecency people see Hester as. The detail represents ,the deep beauty Hester has inside although most people do not see her as a beutiful women. The deep red is a representation of adultery which shows her being an oncast from society. The symbol of the letter “A” is repetitive throughout the novel and grows with Hester and overcomes this with time as people start to see her as a person again and not just a adulterer. Hester acknowledges her sin in her puritan faith but swears to secrecy on the father of Pearl.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, a famous American author from the antebellum period, notices the emphasis on individual freedoms in the works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists during his residency in the Brook Farm’s community. In response to these ideas, Hawthorne writes The Scarlet Letter, a historical novel about Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale’s lives as they go through ignominy, penance, and deprecation from their Puritan community to express their strong love for each other. Their love, even though it is true, is not considered as holy nor pure because of Hester past marriage to Roger Chillingworth, and thus Hester gained the Scarlet Letter for being an adulterer. Hawthorne utilizes biblical allusions, such as the stories of

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The Prison Door In this Chapter from The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne introduces the setting of the book in Boston. He uses a gloomy and depressed tone in the beginning of the chapter. He is able to convey this tone using imagery while describing the citizens, the prison, and the cemetery. However, as he continues to discuss the rose-bush, he uses parallelism to shift the tone to be brighter and joyful. To create a gloomy and depressed tone, Hawthorne uses imagery.

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