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Scarlet Letter Human Condition Essay

723 Words3 Pages

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne reveals a lot about the human condition. A theme that is consistently expressed throughout this novel is the drastic effect of committing a sin, or something that is considered immoral in society. Specifically the book focuses on how secrets can weigh on a person’s mental state and lead to a heavy toll on their daily livelihoods. Hester Prynne, and Arthur Dimmesdale both have to pay a hefty price for the toll that keeping secrets has caused and that is what the novel reveals about the human condition. In The Scarlet letter, Hester Prynne is the protagonist and the bearer of the titular scarlet letter, which is a scarlet letter A, which represents her adultery. The secret Hester keeps is one that …show more content…

Dimmesdale is Hester’s partner in sin, and he is the father of Hester’s baby Pearl. He is the minister in their town and therefore knows the consequences of his sin very well. Due to cowardice he is unable to tell the town that he is a sinner and the pressure continues to increase to the point where he is physically ill and mentally unstable. At some point Dimmesdale’s has that “All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him”. He feels unworthy of being on the receiving end of the Lord’s will. The stress and guilt of keeping a secret and leaving Hester to suffer alone continue to overwhelm him as he falls deeply ill. Keeping this secret also leaves him at the mercy of Roger Chillingworth who is Hester’s husband and a physician. Under the guise of caring for Dimmesdale, Chillingworth torments Dimmesdale and speeds up the deterioration of his mental state. If Dimmesdale had fought past his feelings of cowardice and revealed his hand in Hester’s pregnancy, Chillingworth would not have had a chance to get close to Dimmesdale because Dimmesdale’s mental state wouldn’t be decreasing rapidly. So far, the two main characters of the aScarlet Letter have been shown to suffer consequences for the secrets they kept. This is a major theme in the novel and it also reveals a lot about the human condition. While keeping secrets is not always

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