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Scarlet Letter Good Vs Evil Essay

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Honors English 10 A 2/9/23 Scarlet Letter Have you ever noticed that in life there is evil wherever you go? A perfect example of this is in a story, The Scarlet Letter, written in the 1800s by Nathaniel Hawthorne about a story placed in the 1600s. This story is of Hester Prynne, the protagonist in the story, who gives birth to Pearl, a bastard child, with Dimmesdale in a highly religious puritan society and must live with the sin of adultery by wearing a scarlet letter. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses a Wild Rosebush, Pearl, and Hester’s Cottage to show that it is natural to have good and evil to be in balance together. First off, Hawthorne uses the Wild Rosebush to show that everything in nature is at a balance between good …show more content…

Hester is viewed by the community as inferior because of her scarlet letter A which she must wear as a constant reminder of her horrid deed. The letter A which she wears stands for her sin of adultery and the color scarlet stands for the sexiness and evil which the sin is. Hawthorne narrates, “On the breast of her gown in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A” (Hawthorne 59). This quote is used in the story to show that the letter is meant to stand out and be a reminder of this terrible sin. As the story continues, the views on Hester by the Puritan society change drastically. As the townspeople start to look deeper into Hester, they realize the good she does to do right by her sins. The people saw the service she provided to the community such as caring for the sick and poor and the selflessness bouncing off of her. When you have sinned you must stand atop a scaffold in the center of the town, during the story Hester accompanies Dimmesdale on the scaffold where a meteor flies across the sky creating the letter A. Instead of believing that the A stood for adultery, the townspeople believed that the A stood for Able. Hawthorne explains, “Such helpfulness was found in her,—so much power to do, and power to sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength” (Hawthorne 196). In this, it can be seen that there has been a shift in attitude towards her and the sympathy felt towards Hester. This symbolizes the good in life because it shows her striving to make up for the sin by servicing her community and balancing this evil with being

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Hester's divine beauty outshines others corrupt beliefs of her. While Hester walks stumbles out the prison doors and onto the dreaded scaffold, Hawthorne describes Hester as "the young woman [who] was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance, on a large scale" (40). Hester Prynne is being publicly shamed for the act of adultery she committed along with the minister who condemns her. She is forced to stand on the scaffold and beat the sorrow of he sins with the scarlet letter "A" on her bosom to represent her shameful acts. This mark of embarrassment serves a purpose to make her appear unrighteous, but the author chooses to focus on her beauty, which outshines this emblem.

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Sin in puritan times was not taken lightly. Ignominy was how sinners were punished, and in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the protagonist Hester Prynne was no exception. She was publicly shamed, and forced to wear the letter “A” on her chest. Everything that was meant to be ugly in Hester’s life, turned into something beautiful.

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Hester has to wear a letter A on her chest for her punishment of adultery. In The Scarlet Letter, the meaning and significance of the letter A is altered as the novel goes on. Hester, the townspeople, and Pearl all have views of the letter that change. Through their views of the letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author, reveals what his view on the letter is. Hester’s view of

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It stands out because it is colorful and this convoys that Hester is a sinner because in the Puritan religion it is believed that colorful clothing is only to be worn by the Lord. If you follow the Puritan faith, you have ti wear dark and dreary clothing. Therefore, wearing a Scarlet A on her bosom instantly makes her different than everyone else in the community and causes everyone who sees it instantly know she is different from everyone else. The Scarlet A written on Hester’s bosom alienates her from the

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By wearing the “A,” Hester was publicly humiliated, however, her development in character causes a change in the meaning of the Scarlet Letter, which leads her to taking pride in the letter as it grows a part of her. After Hester’s sin the Puritan community places a false

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She is a beautiful, young woman who has sinned, but is forgiven. Hawthorne portrays Hester as "divine maternity" and she can do no wrong. Not only Hester, but also the physical scarlet letter, a sign of shame, is shown as a beautiful, gold and colorful piece which

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So, they call what hester did adultery. The punish her by putting her in prison, make her stand on the scaffold and get publicly helmalated, and wear a red letter A for adultery. Hawthrone narrates, “on the breast of her grown in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fanstastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A” (Hawthorne 59). After time the scarlet letter started to become a symbol of good. The town people stated to forgive hester.

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Since first subjected to wearing the scarlet letter on all of her clothes and standing on the scaffold for 3 hours, Hester accepted her punishment in full and did not attempt to hid it from the Puritan citizens. She wore the A in “fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold” (PAGE #) to show her acceptance for her sin, and not embrace her embarrassment in front of the citizens. Since Hester allowed the community to view her as a sinner, she was able to accept it herself and repent her sin by accepting the punishment. At first, Hester experienced harsh ridicule for the community and was greatly secluded. Citizens threw rocks at her, and constantly reminded her of her

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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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The scarlet letter, as the focal point of the novel, has the capabilities to take an individual “out of the ordinary relations with humanity” (Hawthorne 60), exiling them away. Hawthorne reveals that the two lovers, Hester and Dimmesdale, quickly take on two different meanings of the scarlet letter. Although Hester was quickly able to understand “the hidden sin in other hearts” (74) because of the scarlet letter, Hawthorne demonstrates that she was still not fully “good” in the eyes of society due to the adultery she had committed. Hester was aware of both the sin she had committed and of what society thought of her, revealing that the exile “had made her strong, but taught her much amiss” (176). This examines that there was a negative side to her exile; the exile allowed her inner morals to become strong and overpower both her and her relationship with Dimmesdale.

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Even though the Puritans may have designated the letter as a representation of sin, Hester’s renewed sense of pride does not want society to define the A for her. Rather Hester wants to define it herself and by doing so she develops responsibility and power over her own actions. Because Hester has the power to change who she is, she also has the power to change what the Scarlet Letter represents. By letting the letter be “embroidered with gold thread” readers are able to see how for Hester sin is not something to be fearful of; furthermore, it allows one to see how Hester has developed into an independent individual who accepts who she is and the situation she is presented with. Hester’s lover unfortunately

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At the beginning of the story, the scarlet “A” is considered as a badge of shame. Hester doesn´t show the scarlet letter as a symbol of shame when she wears it, because she wears a beautiful scarlet “A” embroidered with gold, that she made herself thanks to her ability in making precious needle works. Hester is capable of wearing the scarlet letter in a very determined and secure way. This is why, at the beginning of the story, the townspeople think she is “proud” of her sin. The puritan beliefs say that the scarlet letter should not be pretty, because it is a “punishment” for the sinners to feel ashamed.

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Receiving the scarlet letter changed every aspect of Hester’s life. Especially at the start of the story, the letter symbolized the solitude and great suffering Hester faced just because of a letter placed on her bosom. The “A” also depicted how no one viewed Hester the same way as before her peccant actions. “…she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance” (Hawthorne 109). The pejorative community Hester lived in never saw Hester as the beautiful, young woman she was, but now, as a horrible fiend.

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“Was that Scarlet Letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. ”(Hawthorne 51). Because Puritans were so against Hester’s sin, they made her wear an “A” on her chest that stands for adultery. The townspeople wanted everyone who sees her know what she did so that she would be humiliated by it for the rest of her life. Hester was basically rejected by the town, and was scorned by the people everyday.

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