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The scarlet letter, critical analysis
Literary criticism of the scarlet letter
The scarlet letter, critical analysis
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As two main characters in The Scarlet Letter, which is written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester and Dimmesdale are committed adultery, therefore, the scarlet letter is patched on Hester’s chest. Accordingly, Hester and Dimmesdale have some similarities and differences. Both of the characters have the same sin, love each other, love Pearl , and indeed, they have been changed by their sin. On the other hand, the way that Hester and Dimmesdale deal with their sin is totally different, and it brings them to different ending as well. Hester and Dimmesdale love each other deeply, even though they have changed totally since their identical sin has revealed.
1. A. Hester Prynne is a very bold and daring person. She is one that accepts her sin and doesn’t let it necessarily take over her life. She has a very wild, desperate and defiant soul and has a flightingness of her temper and her actions she is some times very capable at keeping in her emotions. She is one that tends to disobey society, she dresses pearl up on a scarlet dress with gold designs to show that she is also the scarlet letter. B. Arthur Dimmesdale is very ashamed of his sin that he committed but he does not want the people to know that he committed adultery
We are all sinners, no matter how hard we try to hide our faults, they always seem to come back, one way or another. Written in the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us Hester Prynne and how one sin can change her life completely. Hester Prynne changes a great deal throughout The Scarlet Letter. Through the view of the Puritans, Hester is an intense sinner; she has gone against the Puritan way of life committing the highest act of sin, adultery. For committing such a sinful act, Hester must wear the scarlet letter while also having to bear stares from those that gossip about her.
Although publicly admitting to sin can be a challenging task, time will heal the initial pain. Hester Prynne, of the Scarlet Letter, lives this lesson as she commits the sin of adultery. Her punishment for the sin is to wear the letter “A” on her bosom until she is allowed to remove it by the Puritan authorities wishes. Initially, Hester feels guilt and shame as she wears it. As Hester’s character grows in strength, she overcomes the letter’s original purpose of punishment.
Hester Prynne is the heroine of “The scarlet Letter”, and it is possible for us to fully sympathize with her because Through reading the text “The Scarlet Letter” we can find out Hester Prynne had a difficult life and had been suffering very much comparing to other characters because she handles her situation by keeping Dimmesdale a secret even under pressure refusing to let them take her daughter Pearl from her and not hiding from the public after her sin of adultery is revealed and she is punished. Though Hester Prynne does faced her situation better than the other characters it is still she who sufferers the most. The another reason which compel the reader to sympathize on Hester Prynne is because she had to under gone the worse consequences of her sin that she must live with her relationships and interactions with Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, and the way she deal with her sin and the results of it.
The book The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne has symbolism all throughout it. People and objects are symbolic of events and thoughts. Throughout the book, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Hester, Pearl, and Arthur Dimmesdale to signify philosophies that are evident during this time period. Hester Prynne, through the eyes of the Puritans, is an extreme sinner; she has gone against their ways, committing adultery. For this sin, she must wear a symbol of shame for the rest of her life.
Women were typically unable to be a symbol of strength because they were largely oppressed. Yamin Wang furthers this by saying, “By the novel’s end, Hester has become a proto-feminist mother figure to the women of the community. Meng (2003) describes that the shame attached to her scarlet letter is long gone. Women recognize that her punishment stemmed in part from the town father’s sexism, and they come to Hester seeking shelter from the sexist forces under which they themselves suffer” (Wang 897). Wang is saying that other women in the society look up to Hester and realize that she was punished by the sexist males of the society.
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.”
Hester Prynne is the very embodiment of feminism because of her refusal to adhere to the societal norms, her independence in thought, and how the view of the society around her changes through the novel. One of the main reasons why Hester Prynne is an important and progressive feminist character in The Scarlet Letter is her refusal to follow societal norms or to be put down by her peers. A primary example of her refusal to be put down by her peers is when Hester brandishes her
Hester proves that she has a higher understanding for people and life, also a sense of honor based on her own principles not society’s. This perfectly fits the mold for a romantic hero. Towards the end of the novel, we learn that Pearl became a great women and Hester could have lived a great life with her wealthy daughter, yet she chose to return to Boston and live out her punishment. Now the book describes Hester’s final resting place, “It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so somber is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:—"On a field, sable, the letter A, gules”(Hawthorne 259).
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was published in 1850. It focuses on the life of the main protagonist, Hester Prynne, living in a Puritan community. Both Yamin Wang and Maria Stromberg offer insight into The Scarlet Letter and analyze multiple aspects of the story.. Both Wang and Stromberg claim that there is an underlying ideology hidden in the texts of the book. Wang approaches the story from a feminist approach and states that Hester represents the feminism in the Puritan community, and she analyzes the Puritan’s outlook on women in their society.
Hester Prynne, the Worst Sinner Three different people, all with different stories but all have something in common; they’re all sinners but the question is who is the biggest sinner? In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, many characters are portrayed as sinners like Dimmesdale, Hester, and Chillingworth. But overall the biggest sinner in the story was Hester Prynne and there are many reasons for it. Obviously the reason for the scarlet letter, she was an adulteress. Hester caused many problems with people in the town including the most holy man Dimmesdale and a man that should've never been involved, Chillingworth.
Hester's punishment was a judicial sentence; however, being forced to stand on the scaffold for three hours, and to wear the scarlet letter "A" for the rest of her life. It was socially humiliating. Hester was sent to prison for committing adultery. Hester was forced to live with the consequences by wearing the scarlet letter "A". Hester is physically and emotionally reminded of her sin, while wearing the scarlet letter "A".
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)
“Fast food restaurants have us hooked on to their tasty food. You See a lot of people buying fast food because how good it tastes. Well let me tell you it is not good for your health. Why do fast food places lower their prices because they know people will buy it if it doesn’t cost that much and most people buy it cause that`s how much they can afford”. Fast food places is a way to not cook every week I feel bad for people when I go to McDonald’s and ask them, do you know what you’re eating in they say
