More handpicked essays just for you.
Similar values of puritans and american
Puritan values
What is nathaniel hawthorne saying about sin and moral evil through the symbolic of the scarlet letter
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
When Hawthorne declares, “the effluence of her mother’s lawless passion,” he is essentially blaming her for her misfortune and saying that her mistakes have led her to where she is; however, he implies that it was inevitable with how uncontainable her personality and passion was. This slightly condemnatory tone towards Hester contradicts the sorrow and criticization towards society that he once had. Hawthorne is experiencing a complexity in his tone. It seems as though he is unsure of where he should stand on this issue. Hawthornes transcendentalist ideas praise individuality, so her
However, in The Scarlet Letter Hester accepts her sin: “Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom” (Hawthorne 56).
This shows that Hester does not necessarily need to worry about what the people of Boston think of her or how she needs to redeem herself in order to fit back into the society. When Hawthorne says “The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!” he is showing how there is no way for Hester to change her society. She should have love and joy, but instead she is faced with guilt, which leads to her downfall. Along with this, Hawthorne demonstrates how the people of Boston are actually the sinners while Hester and Dimmesdale represent the Angel and the Saint of the city.
Hypocrisy In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne commits the atrocious sin of adultery. As a consequence, she is faced with humiliation, judgment, and self-guilt. As part of her punishment, she is forced to wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ upon her bosom for the rest of her life. The other part of her punishment is for her to stand on the scaffold with newborn baby Pearl.
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
The Scarlet Letter Arguement According to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the author argues that sin and suffering exists even in a utopian society. To illustrate, Hester prynne commits the sin of adultery.
Scarlet Letter They said to him, “Teacher this woman has been in the act of adultery. Now in the law of Moses they commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.
“The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (Smith 1). The Bible, which is the foundation for many religions, says this about the punishment for sins in Ezekiel 18:20. Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, gets punished for infidelity by the donning of a scarlet letter “A” for eternity.
The townspeople “[began] to look upon the scarlet letter as a token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” This quote exemplifies how sin is not a death sentence for Hester. Through hard work and charity it allowed the rigid Puritan society to see her as something different, and as someone who would not let society define who she was. Hester, thus, was not only able to change herself, but also the image in which society viewed her by working hard to benefit the public. Likewise, the scarlet letter which was supposed to represent sin was instead “fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.”
When encountered with a woman charged with adultery, Jesus proclaimed, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). As no man is truly without sin, humans cannot justly punish them for sins without holy guidance. They can, however, worsen their own sin to the point of being irredeemable. in The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Dimmesdale’s sin was the most unholy and dangerous of all those presented in the novel.
As the moving of story, the “side effect” of the hidden sin has reveal. Dimmesdale become more sick and powerless. As the end of the story, Dimmesdale concede the sin and died as the winner of the fight with hidden sin. Dimmesdale as a combination of saint and sinner, his sin is not committed adultery, but it is that he cannot face the sin and admit it. He wanted to be all perfect in the eyes of the masses, but destroyed his perfectly in the eyes of God.
In today’s society, guilt and sin are usually associated with negative connotations. People are under the impression that positive effects can’t result from bad situations. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter takes place in the 1700’s in Boston, Massachusetts. During this time, if someone was to commit a sin, the citizens of the Puritan community would completely shame and bash the person who was involved in the wrongdoing.
Within The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne developed characters that can be related to. By Hawthorne mentioning his Puritan ancestors in the beginning of his book shows that he studied the topic of puritanism before talking about it. Hester Prynne was a character well developed by Hawthorne who goes through problems that society could possibly go through. In Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter before the novel began critics talked about the book and the characters, and gave a good description to Hester Prynne as a “Creation of someone who loved woman, saw her, as verdi did, as necessary tragic and alone, but emotionally sacred in a diminished world (Hawthorne).” This description of Hester was a excellent when it came to describing her as a bit of a outcast among her peers.
My first introduction of Hester Prynne, from what the author described, showed that she wore the Scarlet Letter on her chest with pride and she showed no sense of remorse on her face. “In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors.” (pg.46) My response would be “how could she commit an act so unholy as a mother, and display pride?” The comparison and contrast that Hawthorne makes between Hester and her baby is that her baby is a sin-born infant but never committed an act of adultery.
Students across the world are required to take a standardized test to enter college. A minimum score is set at each college and some are higher than others. The ACT and SAT are the most common test required to take. There is a fee for each test that must be paid every time it is taken. Test scores are enforced to be sent to the college the student wishes to attend.
