Hester's Negative Influence In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

How the Scarlet Letter Transforms Hester In The Scarlet Letter, when Hester is first brought out on the scaffold to by publically shamed for her ignominy, Arthur Dimmesdale pleads with her to name him as her fellow sinner so that he will not have to reveal himself when he exclaims, "Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life.” Hester refuses him and Dimmesdale goes unnamed and unpunished until the very end of the story. While Dimmesdale refuses to accept responsibility for his sin, Hester embraces the shame of the community. It is this difference which causes Dimmesdale enormous amounts of guilt and pain while Hester in able to find peace with herself and with her situation.

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne explores the relationship between the individual and society within a strict puritanical community. After committing adultery, Hester is stripped of her humanity and forced to wear an “A” for “adulterer” in order to appease the community. Her ignominy was lead by Dimmesdale, a minister for the community and later revealed to be the father of her daughter, Pearl. From the beginning of the novel, Hester maintains a commitment to her set of personal values. This is exhibited through her refusal to reveal Dimmesdale’s name, thriving outside the values of the community, and accepting the letter as a part of her identity.

Furthermore, The Scarlet Letter and 1984 both show the reader how an individual can use their personal, sometimes unfortunate, situation to their advantage thereby making both novels, that are set in different historical time periods, very similar. First off all, both novels show how their protagonists, Hester and Winston, use their personal situations to realize the truth of their societies. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester slowly realizes the truth of her society by recognizing the hypocritical nature of the Puritans whom she lives among, as a result of the scarlet letter she wears. As soon as Hester is ordered to wear the scarlet letter, she quickly begins to realize the flaws of her society because of the way her community starts to maliciously

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, the forest symbolizes privacy, freedom and allows an opportunity for Hester to uncover her true identity. However, in Puritan Boston, the setting of the story, Hester is faced with humiliation and punishment on a daily basis. Hester is shunned for committing adultery, and having a child out of wedlock. In the forest, there is sunshine, and Hester is able to rip off the scarlet letter and literally, and figuratively ‘let her hair down.’ This escape allows Hester to be unconcerned with what the judgemental townspeople will think or say.

The scarlet letter is originally a symbol of shame. Instead the scarlet letter becomes a symbol of identity to Hester. The letter’s meaning shifts as time goes on. Originally it marked Hester as an adulterer. The letter “A” eventually comes to stand for “Able.”

Keeping secrets gives you stress and guilt. A doctor known as Anita E. Kelly works at University of Notre Dame for psychology examined and took notes about secrets. She discovered that keeping things to yourself do show more stress, anxiety, and depression along with overall pain and aches throughout the body. She concluded that “secretive people tend to be sick people.” In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dimmesdale is terrified of being shamed by the townspeople and does not confess; leading to the nature of guilt.

The novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrates a conflict between social and individual values that is stressed through the theme of appearance vs reality. Hawthorne’s novel projects a tension that fulfills the purpose of obfuscating the truth. He explores this issue chiefly through his characterization, including the characterization of his heroine, Hester Prynne. Throughout the novel, Hester encounters a barrage of disrespect and cruelty. Her own people shun her because she falls in love and bears her child through an affair with Dimmesdale.

In today’s society, guilt and sin are usually associated with negative connotations. People are under the impression that positive effects can’t result from bad situations. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter takes place in the 1700’s in Boston, Massachusetts. During this time, if someone was to commit a sin, the citizens of the Puritan community would completely shame and bash the person who was involved in the wrongdoing.

2/28/2018 Jake Curran THe Relation between the scarlet letter “A” and Hester’s Identity Hester Prynne’s strength is the most intriguing thing of her character. The author doesn’t give away anything really about Hester’s life before her conflict with the letter, but he does show that she constantly lives through humiliation and torment as a result of her living in a Puritan society. Hawthorne shows how the scarlet letter ends up ruling her life and becomes a part of Hester’s identity. It shows how she can’t get away from her mistake, it follows her throughout the whole book and how it really affects her. What Hawthorne does in fact tell of Hester’s early life is that she came from a “genteel but impoverished English family” (Hawthorne

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne explores recurring themes of suffering surrounding the main characters, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester and Dimmesdale both commit adultery with each other, and, as a result of this, both experience gruesome and occasionally unbearable forms of suffering. Though they undergo different forms of pain, both of their experiences are highly reliant on how the Puritan society treats them. Hester 's pain stems from the shame and estrangement she receives from the community, while Dimmesdale’s is due to the reverence with which the community regards him. Although, in spite of the fact that both Hester and Dimmesdale receive harsh penalty for their sin, by the end of the book, Hawthorne shows how their suffering is, in fact, the key to their salvation.

The Scarlet Letter represents the struggle between man and sin, yet it can be repealed by the hand of God who redeems those worthy. There are two cases in the story, one being Hester who openly lives in sin and Dimmesdale who hiddenly lives a fake life. Both handle their matters differently which determine the roles and outcome of them in the story. In Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester is indeed the protagonists who makes wise decisions and moral choices that positively affect her life. Although Dimmesdale is a reverend and serves the Lord under his church, his actions do not change throughout the story resulting in his demise.

Expressionist artist, Edvard Munch, created a popular painting given the name “The Scream” for its representation of the embodiment of suffering on man and nature. The landscape of the painting is a “dark orange sky” meant to represent the suffering of nature as it is being destroyed by volcanic eruptions and natural disasters. The figure of a man with an “agonized expression” is said to be a result of the great amount of suffering he encounters as both nature and the world around him ceases to exist. Suffering comes in a variety of different ways and at a myriad of different degrees. While suffering appears in many different forms throughout The Scarlet Letter in both Hester and Dimmesdale, the suffering of Dimmesdale is much worse because of the copious amounts of guilt within his conscience.