Literature has been around for many ages. There are many different types of literature fro. many different times. The way people write has changed throughout the years. American literature is commonly talk about because it is well liked, although sometimes it can be hard to understand if you are currently a student. There is nothing quite like the stories that were written in this time. The Devil and Tom Walker, The devil and Daniel Webster, The Man in the Black Suit, and The Scarlet Letter all things in common because they all describe the devil in a special way along with authors of the stories were all men.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale commits a mortal sin by having an affair with a married woman, Hester Prynne. As a man of the cloth in Puritan society, Dimmesdale is expected to be the embodiment of the town’s values. He becomes captive to a self-imposed guilt that manifests from affair and his fear that he won’t meet the town’s high expectations of him. In an attempt to mitigate this guilt, Dimmesdale acts “piously” and accepts Chillingworth’s torture, causing him to suffer privately, unlike Hester who repented in the eyes of the townspeople. When Dimmesdale finally reveals his sin to the townspeople, he is able to free himself from his guilt.
Within a work of literature there may exists a pair of characters that rely on each other to express their traits in full. They are called foil and Arthur Dimmesdale and Robert Chillingworth are an example of this. Although the story centers around Hester there exists struggle between other individuals. Hawthorne wonderfully alludes to the doctrine of Satan accusing the sinner using these two characters and bring forth a suspenseful conflict. This is also called a juxtapose since they wonderfully contrast showing the extremes of character.
Guilt is in everyone. Guilt is often to be seen within everybody, for it is a force that does not fail to capture even the mightiest of people. Guilt behaves as a reminder to let one know privately that he/she has committed a bad deed, after awhile people begin to give in and confess. However, there are those who refuse to accept the actions they have previously taken and hide it. Similarly, the act of act of concealed guilt apparent in the supposed antagonist, Roger Chillingworth, of The Scarlet Letter. Furthermore, in the story of The Scarlet Letter, Hester, has a child with the town’s minister Arthur Dimmesdale, however, Chillingworth, the actual husband of Hester gets wind of this news and immediately sets out to find out who committed
There’s always that one family member that nobody else likes. Whether it be that weird uncle, that crazy aunt, or that annoying cousin - almost everyone has one. Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, takes this idea to the extreme. John Hathorne was a judge during the Salem Witch Trials and the great-great grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hathorne is also known to be the cruelest judge during the Salem Witch Trials - people began referring to him as “the hanging judge.” Knowing now that all of the accused witches were innocent because witchcraft didn’t exist, Hawthorne wanted absolutely nothing to do with his great-great grandfather. So, he changed his last name from Hathorne to Hawthorne in order to remove any association he could’ve possibly had with Hathorne. In other words, he did everything he could to change his
Dimmesdale and Chillingworth both have secrets that make them look and act differently, their secrets affect their character and how they do their job. Dimmesdale is the father of Pearl but he doesn 't want to face the same humiliation as Hester did for his sins. Because of his secret he self punishes and fasts, he also preaches better than he did before although his health is failing. Chillingworth’s secret is that he was the husband of Hester while he was away, before she cheated on him. Chillingworth gets uglier and uglier driven by the need to get revenge on Pearl’s father. Both characters affect others and their own lives good and bad because of the secrets they keep.
In The Scarlet Letter by Daniel Hawthorne many villainous acts occur that contribute to the plot and direction of the text. One antagonist in the novel is Chillingworth, the “departed” husband of Hester Prynne. Chillingworth and his constant mission to gain his wife's love and to reveal the father with whom Hester's baby was conceived by leads him to take some villainous actions. Chillingworth took many actions to obtain his goals, examples of this are constantly exemplified throughout the novel, one example is Chillingworth’s unrelenting hatred towards Dimmesdale. Other examples of Chillingworth's villainous acts consist of his hidden identity, his guilt trip use towards Hester, and overall his relentless pursuit for revenge. In the actions taken by Chillingworth he swayed the outcome of the novel.
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.
Chillingworth’s gravitation towards evil stimulates his lost of humanity, ultimately forcing his fate to become dependent on Dimmesdale’s public confession. When he arrives in the Puritan society in Boston, Chillingworth encounters his wife, Hester, enduring the consequences of public humiliation for an adulterous crime. Due to Hester’s defiant nature and her desire to conceal her partner’s name, Chillingworth was compelled to privately seek the identity of Hester’s partner. During his mission, Chillingworth earns the trust of Reverend Dimmesdale, whom he later identifies as Hester’s partner after discovering marks on the clergyman’s chest that closely resembles the shameful scarlet letter that Hester bears as punishment. Upon his discovery,
From the beginning of the book, Dimmesdale is a hypocrite. Although it is implied that he preaches against premarital sex as a Puritan pastor, Dimmesdale commits adultery with Hester. After getting Hester pregnant, he avoids visiting Hester and his daughter for seven years. For seven years, Dimmesdale pretends he is innocent of adultery and gets praises for his faux act. Dimmesdale even says so himself that he feels extremely guilty and would rather share his crime than to keep it in secret. He obviously does not prefer sharing his crime with the public because he waits seven long years to do so. He was too obsessed with what others think and gossip about him.
In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are faced with major pain and suffering. Dimmesdale forced himself to keep Hester’s and his secret safe, which continued to fester inside him and cause detriment to his well-being. Also, Chillingworth continued to torture him slowly, over the years, which made his suffering worse. Many other factors contributed to the devastation of Dimmesdale, but these are of great importance. Hester and Dimmesdale both indeed suffered, but Dimmesdale suffered more throughout his life, because of his internal pain and the infliction of self-harm, as well as external detriment from outside sources.
He was at fault for the same crime but he kept it hidden from the public, he made many excuses about why he could not come clean with other people and this led to a lot of self-hatred. People that handle their sin in this way will normally be overwhelmed with guilt. This approach is never a good way to handle your sin because you can’t receive forgiveness as well as you should, this is because you have no one to help you through it and this makes it harder to repent for your sin and move on with your life. The Reverend attempted to confess his sin without saying what he actually did by just saying that he was a sinner but because he did not confess the part that he really felt guilty about he was unable to get rid of his guilt. This escalates to him attempting to punish himself by doing things like long fasts praying for hours on end and even whipping himself, but none of these could get him to let go of the sin that was tearing him apart. Dimmesdale should have come clean right at the start but he instead he covered it up and this opens a door for people to use it against you if they find out. This happens in to Dimmesdale when Chillingworth who at the time was Hester’s ex-husband and Dimmesdale’s doctor, he finds out that his suspicions were right about Dimmesdale being the person that was involved in the affair with Hester when he finds the letter A written on his chest. This opens a door for
In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes of the hypocrisy of the Puritans in the 1600’s. He expresses the hardships of Hester Prynne and her adulterous lover, Authur Dimmesdale, who is also the town’s preacher. Because Reverend Dimmesdale is a very noble preacher, he has to persist with the guilt of his sin and continue to preach how one should live a holy and pure lifestyle. Therefore, he feels miserable for his wrongdoing and punishes himself. Even though Dimmesdale inflicts an abundant amount of penance for his sin on himself, it takes the whole course of the novel to experience his penitence for his sin.
In an article written by Dr. Jemshed A. Khan, he claims that Roger Chillingworth poisoned Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale with a drug called atropine in The Scarlet Letter, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Surely, Chillingworth was “a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical science”(Hawthorne 67) and knowledgeable with medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest(Hawthorne 67). Knowing that then he would know how to kill Dimmesdale even though it would be slow and painful. Even though Dr. Khan’s article is in some way persuasive and supported well with different evidence, it isn’t examined further in depth. In The Scarlet Letter there is much support to prove the idea that Dimmesdale was not killed by atropine.
As humans, we live in the that are brimming with sins and evil desire. As the creator of all the creatures, God, sent his only son to save the people from the control of devil. The only thing we have to do is to acknowledge our mistake. Bible teach us that we should tell the truth to God and your neighbors, and God will forgive you. But people are worse, they not only hide the sin and their evil behaviors but also try to deny it. We are born sinners, we can not be save only based on how we act but depend on do we acknowledge our sins. In the novel Scarlet letter, author Nathaniel Hawthorne compare and contract the hidden sin and the revealed sin but use the end of Dimmesdale and Hester to claim the consequence of hide sins.