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Teen Parents In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter

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The Scarlet Letter is an excellent book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in the year 1850. Considering that the 1850’s was more than 150 years ago, I wanted to relate this book to nowadays. Hester was not seen the same with her Scarlet Letter, and people felt ashamed of her. I began to think who wore their own “Scarlet Letter” in our generation. There are many people who commit sin or are looked down upon. The first group of people who came to mind were sex offenders. Some of these criminals get charged even when they are 18 and their partner is 17 years old. It isn’t taken lightly considering they will be on the list for the rest of their lives. The state will require them to live/work about 500 feet away from schools and they cannot be …show more content…

Although some people support them, there is a lot of family members and students that will scorn them. Even if they were a kind, smart person before their pregnancy, people will only see them as the teen mom. The teen parent’s Scarlet Letter is represented through the 9-month baby bump that people will always seem to remember. In the book, all the citizens of the Puritan county disdained Hester and they always thought of Reverend Dimmesdale as holy. Dimmesdale reveals himself, “...Ye, that have loved me!—ye, that have deemed me holy!—behold me here, the one sinner of the world!” (Hawthorne, 196). I interpret Dimmesdale’s words to mean that no matter how holy or perfect someone is, they can easily be capable of a huge sin. Two of the main character’s sins were revealed, but I can imagine that everyone in the town had plenty of hidden sins. Although I am focusing on people who have sins related to lust, I believe that we all have our own“Scarlet Letter”. We sin on a daily basis, and it’s only normal for a human. If I said I didn’t get frustrated and curse today, well, that would be a lie. Look, there’s another sin! Honestly, we probably have sinned (maybe not related to adultery) more than once today, even if it was just cursing. We can’t sit here and say that we are perfect, for we all wear our own Scarlet Letter, although it is not

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My peers and I discussed and timidly admitted to committing similar sins. One of my peers, Kirsten Felan said, “It is true. Most people allow themselves to cheat, especially after they have accomplished a good deed.” Kirsten’s response ties in with the entire concept of the moral diet. Just like when someone cheats in a diet they convince themselves it is acceptable because they have been eating healthy.

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However, after many years of performing good deeds for the community the scarlet letter, and by extension Hester, was met with less hostility. Her influence is so great that many citizens start to believe the scarlet letter “...[now] meant Able…”(Hawthorne

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“And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system” (Hawthorne 174). In The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale serves as the holiest person many people meet in their moral lifetime, and as the purest embodiment of God’s word. However, Dimmesdale has a wounding secret, a cancer, that tears his soul apart throughout his time in America. Dimmesdale falls prey to sin in a moment of passion with Hester, resulting in her condemnation by the townspeople, and the birth of their child, Pearl. For years, Dimmesdale’s life is defined by an internal conflict - his job demands his purity in the eye of the townspeople, but he desires the acceptance of herself that Hester achieves through her sin being made public.

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One spontaneous but significant mistake made by Arther Dimmesdale caused him to live the rest of his life crawling with guilt. Arthur Dimmesdale, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, had an affair with a married woman, and that crime ruined the lives of almost everyone in the novel. The Scarlet Letter remains a classic to this day because it emphasizes harsh penance which highlights the difference between the treatment of sinners today and those during the 17th century. The way Puritans view sin and guilt cause Dimmesdale’s life to come to an unfortunate end.

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867 Words | 4 Pages

The Catholic Church maintains that seven vices in particular to breaking one or more of the Ten Commandments. These particular bad habits are called the Seven Deadly sins because, according to Catholicism, they’re sins that kill the life of sanctifying grace. Pope Gregory the Great made up the list in the 6th century, and in the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer popularized them in his Canterbury Tales. In the Bible states , “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers” (Proverbs 6:16-19). This means

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997 Words | 4 Pages

The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the nineteenth century, provides insight into the social stigma surrounding gender equality in his own community and era. Throughout the chapters, Hawthorne's uses Hester to provide a direct reflection to the lives of women in the nineteenth century. Hawthorne employs devices such as specified diction which pertains to each individual character, multiple shifts in the tone used in order to draw attention to shifts in judgment or beliefs of characters, and imagery in order to validate his overall personal belief that women deserve the autonomy and respect that men have possessed for centuries. Hawthorne uses the Scarlet Letter as a novel for social change by characterizing Hester as a woman

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Although the community originally knew Hester as a disgrace, the town’s opinion of her changed over time as she began to do work for the poor and needy. After this shift in the town’s view of Hester, “many people refused to interpret the scarlet [letter] by its original signification” (111). Instead of Hester’s scarlet letter serving as a reminder of her scandalous sin, her peers “ had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as a token . . . of [Hester’s] many good deeds” (111). She became known for her charity and generosity, which caused the civilians to overlook her sinful behavior.

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St. Paul of Tarsus has made a huge impact on the Church by showing everyone how a single sinner can be changed by God for the better. Before his conversion, Paul was known as Saul, a tentmaker, Roman citizen, and a persecutor of Christians. Saul traveled to Cyprus and Asia Minor to preach to other Jewish brothers, and he later made three separate journeys to churches all around the Mediterranean Sea. During his journey to Damascus, Saul fell off his horse in a flash of light, and God called out to him, “Why are you persecuting me?” Saul was suddenly blinded, and a man called Ananias cured him and later baptized him.

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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

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719 Words | 3 Pages

Even though the Puritans may have designated the letter as a representation of sin, Hester’s renewed sense of pride does not want society to define the A for her. Rather Hester wants to define it herself and by doing so she develops responsibility and power over her own actions. Because Hester has the power to change who she is, she also has the power to change what the Scarlet Letter represents. By letting the letter be “embroidered with gold thread” readers are able to see how for Hester sin is not something to be fearful of; furthermore, it allows one to see how Hester has developed into an independent individual who accepts who she is and the situation she is presented with. Hester’s lover unfortunately

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566 Words | 3 Pages

However, more than any of the other deadly sins, Americans today are guilty of anger. The term seven deadly sins originated from the Bible, where it talks about the most dangerous sins. Sin is defined as “a strong feeling of

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804 Words | 4 Pages

In “The Scarlet Letter” he depicts it as an oppressive 17th – century Puritan society. “The style of Puritanism that Hawthorne presents is drab and gloomy, preoccupied with judgment and punishment, unrelenting and dogmatic,”1 writes Deborah L. Madsen in her book, “American Exceptionalism.” Hester Prynne, the main character accused of adultery, is persecuted by Boston community. Not only adults despise her, but also children who, blinded by the decayed values and norms, humiliate her and her child, Pearl. The character of Hester symbolizes the fight against Puritan enslavement, the need to modernize the prevailing norms that cause nothing but harm to American society.

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1417 Words | 6 Pages

The day a mother gives birth is one of the happiest days of her life. The happiness of the new baby fills the room and brightens the family’s day. Some women do not get this experience, because they decide to have an abortion instead. Abortion is where a mother kills the fetus inside of her womb. Abortion should be forbidden because it can be dangerous and there are other ways that someone could go about having that baby, like adoption.

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I cannot make this is an every day thing” and finally, “I will only sin once a week and make sure I go to church on Sunday and God will forgive me.” I believe as believers we like to give ourself some sort of comfort in us sinning. We know we did wrong

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936 Words | 4 Pages

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)

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