Day And Night Motifs In The Scarlet Letter

Cassandra Abbarno
Mrs. Melissa Lyons
AP Lit
29 October 2015
The Scarlet Letter RRJ Chapters 11-13 In chapters 11-13 of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne focuses on just a few of the many motifs involved in the novel. The Day/Night motif as well as the Evocative names play an important role in the part of the book. If we recall just chapter 12 alone, “The Minister's Vigil”, we see Day vs Night play out in front of us. Arthur Dimmesdale puts himself upon the platform where Hester Prynne had to stand on for 3 hours as a result of her crime. The difference being that Dimmesdale did this action at night, when there was little to no chance of anyone important seeing his attempt at repentance. At some point in the night, Hester and Pearl come

From Pearl to Dimmesdale, everyone could find a deeper portrayal of a character to relate to. In the last couple chapters, we see a lot of death. After Dimmesdale reveals his association with Hester and Pearl, he dies in Hester’s arms, and soon after, Chillingworth passes away and leaves Pearl with a hefty inheritance. Lastly, Hester retires to her old run-down cottage to live the rest of her life with her scarlet letter, helping the women in the community. This reveals the death of the letters stigma, giving Hester her life back. I feel as if this ending did convey all of the themes that the work had been developing and showed that for Hester, there was life after sin. Emotionally, the ending was extremely satisfying, giving both men what they deserve and Hester freedom to live her life without either of them to make her feel guilty or have to remember her sin. You feel as if this is exactly what they have all been working towards, peace with Hester’s sin. When Hester is buried next to Dimmesdale, it would have been emotionally Dissatisfying had they not had the “A” engraved on their gravestone since I feel as if the scarlet letter had become more of sign of Hester herself and less that of her sin. However, on Dimmesdale’s part, he seems to need some sort of symbol of his life and what it entailed since he never had to publicly endure it during his life on earth. I don’t think that I would write a different ending, but if I had to, I would definitely add more about Pearls final whereabouts and how she ended up. Pearl was such a big part of the story, it was a bit unsatisfying that we were not given much insight on where she ended up or how she felt about the endings