Scarlet Letter Guilt Essay

Effects of Guilt How much can guilt affect a person? The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set in a Puritan town in Massachusetts in the 1600s. The main character Hester Prynne is punished by the magistrates of her town, and she has to always wear a scarlet letter “A” on her bosom for Adultery. Throughout the novel, Hester has to deal with the shame and guilt the scarlet letter brings her. Hester’s secret lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, is the revered minister of the town, but his sin is not revealed to others like Hester’s, so he has to deal with the guilt of his sin secretly, while still helping other people with their sins. There are many symbols that appear throughout the novel, one of them being sunlight and darkness. Sunlight and darkness

Sunlight and darkness show the effects of sin and guilt of the characters, though the way sunlight brings happiness. Pearl, the child of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, who as a child does not have any sins or guilt, loves the sunlight, plays in it, and it brings her joy. In the forest on a cloudy day, when there were only patches of sunlight, “Pearl set forth at a great pace, and as Hester smiled to perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the midst of it, all brightened by its splendor, and scintillating with the vivacity excited by rapid motion” (Hawthorne 103). Pearl is able to enjoy the sunlight, and it makes her happy. She plays with it, and the sunlight also wants to shine on her. Later, when Hester catches up to Pearl, the sunlight vanishes, and a shade comes over

One night, Dimmesdale, who longed for relief from his guilt, stands on the scaffold, where he feels he should have been the day Hester was shamed for the sin both of them committed. Soon, Hester and Pearl join him, and he finally feels some relief from the torture of his guilt. Suddenly, a meteor, in the shape and color of a red “A” appears in the sky. As the meteor flies across the sky, it is “as if. the light. reveal[s] all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another” (Hawthorn 87). Dimmesdale, who only stands on the scaffold in the darkness of the night, where secrets can be hidden, has a moment of daylight in the night. His sin was visible then, only there was no one around to see it. The revealing and not revealing of sins has had a huge effect on the characters in the novel, and sunlight symbolizes it. Sunlight and darkness shows the effects of sin and guilt on the characters through the way the darkness surrounds the people who are seen as evil. One very clear example of evil in the novel is Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, who becomes evil in his desire for revenge on his wife’s