Suffering In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter “Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.” (Franz Kafka) In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, he uses examples that challenge this thought by portraying the suffrage of Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale and reasoning that suggests that Hester suffers worse. Though both Dimmesdale and Hester suffer in extremely different ways, that somehow relate in ways, Hester suffers more. Through the passionate descriptions in the beginning and impactful imagery, the profound language and juxtaposition of his writing, and the questionable logic as well as the encapsulating parallelism, Hawthorne proves that Hester faces more difficulty due to her

Hawthorne can portray Dimmesdale's struggles by using climactic diction as well as juxtaposing his ideas about Dimmesdale’s thoughts on life and death. As Hester was suffering public humiliation Dimmesdale was facing his personal and inner struggles. Hawthorne presents his thoughts, “While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, indeed, in great part, by his sorrows.” (Hawthorne 117) Hawthorne can exemplify Dimmesdale’s self-pity by using powerful words like “black trouble” and “machinations.” Not only is Nathaniel Hawthorne showing Dimmesdale's self-hate and guilt, he is saying that he won by feeling this particular way which led him to suffer as he is now. Hawthorne also juxtaposes Dimmesdale’s guilt with a feeling of him simply wanting to die. Hawthorne claims, “And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it because an accursed thing must there be buried.” (Hawthorne 119) By writing this Hawthorne allows Dimmesdale to go so far into a depressive state that he thinks what he did was so wrong that when he is buried no living thing could live and

Hawthorne's word choices open up new ideas to the audience, the reader may think this and ponder was this truly a logical thing to happen to Hester and if so why? He is also able to reconnect from near the beginning of the novel back to when it was just Hester and Pearl taking on the world with each other hand in hand, but he can open up a new chapter and allows Hester to find a sense of peace. Hawthorne writes, “ We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our brain; where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.” (pg. 211) This connects by showing that at the beginning of the novel, when Hester first wore the letter, and she did not care what everyone else thought and wore it with confidence, it came full circle to the end of the novel where she wore the letter no longer as a representation of her sins but as a reminder of the life she once