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Sin And Secret Keeping In Scarlet Letter

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The Scarlet Letter, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a hopeless tale of one Hester Prynne, who committed adultery and now has to pay for her crime, and her relationship with the rest of the characters in the book; this reveals how a harsh society can ruin lives. The negative impact of committing sin and secret-keeping is seen throughout the entire story of The Scarlet Letter; it is portrayed through Hester’s fate, the intertwined lives of Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, and the ultimate end.
The scarlet letter Hester Prynne now bears on her chest will unfairly rule the rest of her life. Her own sin led to the attainment of the scarlet letter. Hester was a beautiful young woman in a new town, and her husband did not care much for her and also …show more content…

Dimmesdale ended up dying because he was weak and couldn’t handle everyone he loved and trusted knowing the truth, and couldn’t bear to see his high and mighty position in society be torn down. He died extremely soon after telling everyone what he did, and therefore escaped societal punishment. “He had told his hearers that he was altogether vile … and that the only wonder was, that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes, by the burning wrath of the Almighty!” (Hawthorne 99) Dimmesdale’s high position in society made him think extremely highly of the people, as they loved him and trusted him to properly hold that position. When he betrayed them, his own value of self plummeted and he could no longer efficiently help them with advice or prayer. He brought that fate onto himself. Roger Chillingworth died because he made a conscious choice to pour his soul into hating Dimmesdale. After Dimmesdale died, Chillingworth was reported in this way - “All his strength and energy - all his vital and intellectual force - seemed at once to desert him” (Hawthorne 177). His entire being was dedicated to “looking after” Dimmesdale and being with him. The betrayal he went through consumed his entire life, and after the object of his attention died, he had nothing else to live for. Hester made a lasting impression on society and yet nothing about her status …show more content…

Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth all brought about their own means of individual destruction, whether it was physical, spiritual, or societal, and that all stemmed from having such big secrets kept in their hearts from everyone else. In the end, they all met their own end, for better or for worse, and it speaks volumes on what Puritan society was like back in the mid 19th century. Sin might be forgivable, but the punishment that always follows can ruin someone’s entire

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Dimmesdale suffers differently from Hester, because while she “bore it all” to the townspeople (181), his fears forced him to hide his sin, living a life full of “nothing but despair” (177). Hester, though made a social pariah of the town, has a more honest and healthy way of dealing with her sin. Because Hester is forced to face her wrongdoings under the watchful eye of her Puritan neighbors, she did not have the same guilt of secrecy that Dimmesdale did. Dimmesdale, by hiding his sin, allows himself to become a captive to his guilt. The way that Dimmesdale dealt with his guilt was unhealthy for him, both mentally and physically.

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Hester finds community service, whereas the minister's sin-related repercussions cause him immense distress and a physical and emotional breakdown. Chillingworth steps in as the go-between to help Hester and Dimmesdale realize what they are going through. He evolves into someone even nastier than he was before. He devises a plan to undermine Hester's reputation, which was already in jeopardy. Tarnishing Hester’s reputation was Chillingworth’s way of getting back at Hester for the humiliation that she caused him.

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Hester who was caught committing adultery was condemned with standing on a scaffolding with a scarlet letter A the rest of her life. Though the male adulterer was never caught Hester’s husband Chillingworth sought out to make this person's life a living hell. This person was

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Dimmesdale is only tormented because of the guilt in his heart. He would not feel this guilt if he would only confess his righteousness to the world. In some way Chillingworth really shows the true character of Dimmesdale that he is not this majestic

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Considering the townspeople’s reactions toward Hester’s sin of adultery, it can be concluded that in the Puritan era, religion was of utmost importance, and the Puritans met sins with extremely harsh punishments. Because the majority of the Puritan town viewed Hester as a disgrace, she became “Lonely . . . and without a friend on earth” (56). This made it effortless for the inhabitants of the town to continue to insult and degrade Hester because they did not care to learn her true personality. While a few civilians had sympathy for Hester, the town mostly regarded her as shameful and

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The book “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a complex novel that has underlying themes of sin and the responsibility for sin. The novel takes place in a Puritanical society, but two people, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, fornicate with each other, even though Hester is married to someone else. Only Hester is punished, so Dimmesdale keeps his guilt inside, not revealing it to anyone. Hester’s husband, Chillingworth, then proceeds to ruin Hester’s partner in crime, corrupting his soul and being the ultimate cause for his death. Hester, on the other hand, leads a relatively happy life after she had repented for her sin.

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“The injured husband” realized that “he need deal no further” with Hester, “Her punishment is sure,” but that he found that “the man too” should “be punished,” but that to punish him “he must know him.” When Chillingworth “finds him out” who Hester sinned with, he “does punish him” and “brings him to death.” (Londhe 2) He dedicates himself to finding the man Hester sinned with, because he realizes that Hester does not need punishment, so he finds the man, Dimmesdale, he tortures him both physically, through giving him medication that does more harm than good, and emotionally, through asking questions. Roger Chillingworth’s new identity came with “a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.”

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As every sin is different, every sin has a different effect on a person depending the persons ….. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne examines what sin is, how it affects each person, and how their sin is perceived in nature versus the community. Protagonist, Hester Prynne, is subjected to harsh punishment and ridicule in the town, as she had committed the sin of having a child out of wedlock. However the father of her child, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, keeps his sin hidden from the community, hoping to escape from the shame and embarrassment and maintain his status in the community. However as his sin withers away at his soul, he is forced to live with Doctor Roger Chillingworth, a respected doctor among the Puritan Society and Hester Prynne’s former husband.

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Furthermore, Roger Chillingworth, Dimmesdale’s physician, decided to take a more violent way in solving his problems and turned to his black alchemy and torture. Through these characters’ hardships, the reader will further understand that self discipline, as a consequence of one’s guilt, is considerably more detrimental to one’s self compared to the shame others may regard. In the beginning of the novel, Hester Prynne committed a very wrongful sin of the time period, adultery. She was shunned from the community and labeled as an adulterer or one who is unfaithful to his or her spouse.

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To most people, it is common knowledge that sin of any kind is bad and worthy of punishment, but not all sin is created equal. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter discusses various types of both sin and punishment through the story of Hester Prynne, her lover Arthur Dimmesdale, and her husband Roger Chillingworth. Hester and Dimmesdale commit adultery, and once she becomes pregnant and is discovered she is faced with harsh condemnation and isolation from the townspeople in their mid-17th century Puritan community. Dimmesdale conceals his unlawful relationship with Hester to the town, which causes him great moral pain.

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Throughout the story, it is clear that he wants to confess his sin, when he is yelling at the scaffold at night but he’s too weak to do it publicly. The interactions between Hester and Dimmesdale show her hold over him because she has been publicly condemned for a sin that they had committed together. His inability to reveal and accept the truth makes him extremely weak. When Dimmesdale decides to reveal the truth during his Election Day speech, he passes away because he had waited too

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He was the last person that people would think as a sinner. Dimmesdale was sin when he was committed adultery with Hester. He broke the law of church, but he was afraid to face the punishment and indifferent attitude from he masses. As a faithful follower, Dimmesdale also afraid the punishment of God, so he flog himself with a whip. The physical and spiral torture and the control of Chillingworth stranded him in a world that he cannot contact with others.

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