Hester and her daughter, Pearl, were constantly ridiculed by the inhabitants of the town, and many citizens believed that Hester deserved a harsher penalty for her actions. One woman mocked Hester while gossiping with her peers when she declared, “‘This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die’” (36). Agreeing with this claim, many of the villagers continued to mock and scrutinize not only Hester’s actions, but Hester herself. Another woman suggested that “‘a brand of hot iron [should have been put] on Hester Prynne’s forehead’” (36). While this sentence seems less harsh than death, this woman’s comment proves that she too believed that Hester deserved a severe punishment for her despicable sin.
With “The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite Relief! She had not known the weigh until she felt the freedom! … All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest gladdening each green leaf transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees.” (199).
Hester was initially married to a man whom she never loved and was thought to be dead after being lost at sea for five years. After waiting for the arrival of her husband which never came, Hester had an affair with another man and together they produced a child. When Hester had an affair with a man who was not her husband she had committed an act of adultery and had to be punished in the eyes of God and of her community. It was decided that Hester would have to serve time in jail and
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
The Consequences of Sin Sin is defined as “an offense against religious or moral law”. The idea of sin and being ostracized for your sins was extremely relevant during the Puritan period when religion was the greatest component of daily life. The Puritans believed that they had entered a covenant with God and therefore any sin, such as crime and adultery were considered a breach of their covenant with God. This view led to the church punishing people who committed sin in order for God not to punish the church as a whole. The consequences and effects of sin is shown through the character development in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter.
Have you felt the need to exculpate your sins, for your guilt is eating you inside? The Scarlet Letter gives you the experience to suffer with the characters and their desire to expiate their sinful selves and at the end you would think that all of their suffering would be mollified and they would live happily ever after like every other popular story, but it had a different twist. To be candor ,when I finished reading the book I was pretty disappointed, for the characters in the story who suffered from beginning to end didn’t really liberate and feel repentance for their sins or restart their life like the human beams they were. I love twist endings, but I feel like the story could’ve of ended differently. I felt like Hester didn’t really
We are all sinners. Although one may try hard not to sin, all humans eventually succumb at some time or another to sin. While people may not able to avoid the fate which awaits them, the power of free will allows people to decide how they will respond to sin. While some may respond with guilt and regret, others may react with a sense of redemption and a renewed sense of responsibility. Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American author during the 19th century witnessed the power of sin to wreak havoc not only to an individual but a whole community.
Literary Devices in The Scarlet Letter Literary devices are often used to capture a reader’s attention in a text. Nathaniel Hawthorne used many different types of literary devices in his book The Scarlet Letter. He uses symbolism to give hidden meaning to elements in the story, conflict to make the story interesting, and allusion to make references to historical events (ex. biblical references). While reading The Scarlet Letter, the literary devices did not jump out at me, but now as I reflect upon them they help me understand the book well. Literary devices can make a passage have a whole different meaning.
The Hidden Sin and The Revealed Sin As humans, we live in the that are brimming with sins and evil desire. As the creator of all the creatures, God, sent his only son to save the people from the control of devil. The only thing we have to do is to acknowledge our mistake. Bible teach us that we should tell the truth to God and your neighbors, and God will forgive you. But people are worse, they not only hide the sin and their evil behaviors but also try to deny it.
Nobody is perfect. Every action has a consequence. Whether that consequence is good or bad, that is based on the action. Typically, we correlate bad actions with bad consequences. However, sometimes society gives a bad consequence for a not-so-bad action.
Hosea Ballou was an American theologian who was an influential leader of the Universalist Church for more than 50 years. Hosea started this influential journey in 1791 and continued until his death in 1852. In one of his sermons Ballou once said, “There is no immunity from the consequences of sin; punishment is swift and is sure to one and all.” Hawthorne conveys the idea that sin will be punished in some manner, but beyond the punishment, the effects of sin are influenced by our initial response to it. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne explores how the decision to confess, hide, or seek revenge determines the strength of impact on the sinner’s character.
The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, functions as an evaluation of Puritan ideas, customs, and culture during the 17th century. Through this evaluation, we can get a good idea of what core values and beliefs the Puritans possessed, as well as the actions they take in cases of adversity brought about by “sinners”. Some Puritan virtues created stark divisions between groups of people, some of which led to discrimination under certain circumstances. One of the most prominent of these is the treatment and standards of men and women, a concept that surfaced during some of the major points in The Scarlet Letter. The divisions that were created by Puritan standards of men and women played a great role in shaping the plot of The Scarlet Letter, determining the fate of many of the characters.
This effects her every day life going out in public and getting ridiculed by all the towns people she is surrounded by. Hester Prynne doesn’t just have to live with a mistake right on her shirt, but people also help her remember past. She does have her daughter or her “sole treasure.” The young girls name is pearl and she is not exactly like the others. It isn't easy because her and her mother are considered different in the community so she is lonely but very
Hester Prynne was an example of sin, guilt, and redemption. Hawthorne uses bible passages as examples. The consequences for our sins are determined by God and where we will go. Hester’s punishment is wearing the letter, ‘A’ on her breast. " God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonoured bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven!"- (pg 55).
In the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)
