When Hester Prynne is upon the scaffold, a spectator criticizes Hester’s punishment by saying “ At the very least they should have put the brand of a hot iron on her forehead”(Hawthorne 49). The townspeople’s belief causes them to do everything possible to make her regret her mistake. The angry villagers gossip about her and exile her from the society. They even go as far as to try to execute Pearl. Since it is sometimes difficult for one to be forgiven for certain sins in today’s society, it seems almost impossible to be redeemed in the eyes of the rigid Puritans.
TheHer sudden aptitude for sewing was attributed to her guilt. After receiving her punishment, Hester declared, “Here… had been the scene of her guilt… and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul” (Hawthorne 55). Hester used her guilt and resentment to improve upon herself. In time, the town began to see the assuage of the letter. Hester was no longer denied the town’s attention, but she surely was not accepted into the society.
Reality behind Public Humiliation In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, the character Hester Prynne is publically shamed for committing adultery. Hester is forced to stand upon a podium and is taunted and shunned by her fellow townspeople. Along with the exposure, she has to visibly wear the letter “A” attached to her chest for the rest of her life. In today’s society, public humiliation is still used occasionally as a possible form of punishment for the convicted.
By choosing to embrace her actions, Hester flourishes and presents the scarlet letter with a new meaning. Hester has no way of hiding her sins like Dimmesdale since she is pregnant. Hester’s punishment was to stand for three hours on the scaffold and wear the scarlet letter on her chest for the rest of her life. Initially, the people of the Boston were cold and scorned Hester for her sins. One resident eventually attempts to end the mocking of Hester, shouting “’[n]ot
She takes him in and pities him, offering him food and a place to stay that night. Her actions show kindness, but then she speaks of Jim, the runaway slave and how she wishes to catch him for the cash reward. Twain is depicting how immoral people of society are, and oblivious to the fact that
John Proctor tells Abigail that she needs to stay away from him and that he is happy with his family. She doesn’t like that, so she thinks that if she gets Elizabeth convicted of witchcraft, John and her can finally be together. Abigail does end up getting Mrs. Proctor convicted, but John doesn 't want anything to do with Abigail after that. Abigail ends up running away because her plan didn’t work out the way she wanted it to. Abigail was definitely a negative force in this
Both have taken part in acts of adultery, and have thus broken one of the commandments. At the most fundamental level; however, their sins and the subsequent consequences couldn’t be further apart. Proctor’s life is turned upside-down after Williams begins to accuse other Salem citizens and he pretends to not let that affect him, even though it gnaws on him until he is forced to take action when his wife is accused and arrested. In the end though, he has to make one of two choices, either to confess and blame other innocents or to plead not guilty and be hanged from the neck until death. His attempt at discrediting Williams through revealing his adulterous relationship with her has already failed.
While Chillingworth has committed multiple sins as he thrives off of seeking revenge at both Hester and Dimmesdale. What makes these characters similar is in the fact that they are all sinners. But the thing that makes these three different from one another, is in the way they deal with the guilt that comes with the sin. Hester is different from both Dimmesdale and Chillingworth in the fact
The two characters are seen to experience different results based on the same crime. Hester Prynne, eventually redeemed, suffered the consequences derived from the community, whom shut her out, for many years. The harsh punishment she endured made her closer to the townspeople. Out of the shame she became proud and strongly accepting of others faults, but through her willingness to accept her consequences, Hester grew to love herself; removing herself from her sin, she gained her freedom. Contrastingly, Dimmesdale, a minister of the town, who committed an identical sin to Hester's, became removed from
The Scarlet Letter follows the story of Hester Prynne, a woman forced by the Puritan community she resides in to wear a badge of humiliation (a shiny red A sewn to her bosom) for committing adultery. Quickly introduced to Hester’s daughter, Pearl, readers are left wondering who her father is. After several years pass, the leaders of the community, referring to Pearl as a child of the devil, attempt to take her away from her mother, deciding that Hester is incapable of raising her. However, they fail and Hester remains to care for her daughter.
Rebranding is not an easy thing to do yet Hester has made this happen as “ People brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble.” people are coming to her for help with similar situation to what hester went through. They trust her enough to tell her their deepest sins yet at the beginning of the book she was shunned by the whole town. This displays the change that the town has taken because in the beginning of the book all they saw her as was the embodiment of the A and the sin she committed yet, now they are seeing her as a real person.
Through these actions, "Such helpfulness was found in her-so much power to do and power to sympathized -that many people refused to interpret the scarlet "A" by its original signification. They said that it meant "Able": so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman 's strength" (Hawthorne
Carlos Martinez The book is about a girl named Hester and at the beginning of the book he secretly slept with the preacher in the town, and became pregnant, and because no unmarried man came forward, they correctly assumed a married one was involved. The town believed her punishment should be to wear the letter A as a sign of her sin, which made her an outcast in a society that prided itself on conformity The scarlet letter begins as a symbol for adultress; it is meant to be a symbol of shame. The scarlet letter the core of the story line revolves around a movement known as the Puritan. The Puritan movement began when King Henry declared England 's independence from the Church of Rome and he appointed himself head of the new Church of England.
The Scarlet Letter begins in 1642 Boston, Massachusetts with the Puritan society punishing Hester Prynne for her sins against God. The puritans believe that any crime is a crime or a sin against God and the Puritan leaders take this very seriously. Hester committed adultery with an unknown man. She was living out her punishment peacefully with her child Pearl until Roger Chillingworth appears back in town. No one knows that Chillingworth is Hester 's husband except for Hester.
“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.