Sunlight Symbolism In The Scarlet Letter

Symbolizing Sunlight Secrets are like a personal, private jailer. They keep you locked away from others, isolated and alone in darkness. Every passing day makes your cell more condensed slowly trapping you between promises and morals. Secrets steal your freedom. Likewise, in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne refuses to expose the name of her husband and the name of her partner in sin; by not revealing the entire truth, Hester becomes a trapped soul in her own mind. The Puritan society isolates and publically humiliates the adulteress justifying the embarrassment as her need to repent. Her unnamed partner is trapped even more because he is completely living a lie. Symbolism is used by Hawthorne to show how imprisoned

Committing a crime will most likely lead to time in jail which is what happened to Hester. Once released from prison the townspeople, which was gathered around the jail, saw Hester in all her beauty with her “dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam,” (Hawthorne 51). The sun’s refusal to shine onto Hester is correlated to Hester’s refusal minutes before to reveal her lover to the town and her husband. Society may know her secret but they don’t know the full story. Because Hester is a part of the Puritan society, she realizes and knows her sin is almost unforgivable and is sometimes even punished with death. If Hester keeps refusing to reveal her secret lover she could perish from the sun’s neglect because the sun is what makes life possible. Hester sinned but her greatest punishment isn’t from her actual sin it’s from secrecy. Hester had a baby, named Pearl- a human symbol of the “A”- and when she grew older she would walk with her mother in the woods. One day as they were walking Pearl said to Hester “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom,” (Hawthorne 174). Later it is evident, Pearl is the “A” and when she speaks, it speaks; they are the same. Because Pearl tells her mother so blatantly the sun

He stood on the scaffold hand in hand with Hester and his daughter, resting his weight on them for his energy and liveliness was gone. At a little past noon “the sun [...] shone down upon the clergyman” showing his fragile, weak body (Hawthorne 241). It was then he confessed everything the town had wondered about for the last 8 years. Due to the fact the sun was directly above the minister he he finally revealed the truth shows that the sun is in relation to the truth. Hawthorne uses the sun to foreshadow the truth is soon to be discovered. Once all the secrets are out dimmesdale asks his daughter and Hester for forgiveness as well as God’s, he then said farewell and the crowd was silent. No voice spoke until the “murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit” could be heard (Hawthorne 243). Dimmesdale was constantly in pain from not voicing his sin, and when his confession hit the air he found freedom. He became free from the pain, free from the embarrassment, and free from the ridicule. Both hester and Dimmesdale kept their unholy union hidden for so long because they believed it was for the bets. Unknowingly, they were causing more harm because they had flawed logic. They believed anyone could be free if know one else knew but in reality they only way to be free is in the truth,whether it is with an