Mirror In The Scarlet Letter
In the story “The Scarlet Letter,” the author uses mirror as a device to exposes the truth by reflecting on the characters through characterization, mood, setting and theme. An individual cannot completely hide his or her sin when looking through a mirror. Hawthorne uses the mirror reflection to create a sense of piercing into a character’s thought thus revealing to the reader its purpose- to expose the truth- setting up a stage to carry on its mood, setting and deliver themes.
Mirror characterizes characters and reveals to them the truth through the reflection of its image. While Hester was standing on the scaffold, “she saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been
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As Hester walking around the Governor’s mansion, she notices herself through a gleaming armor and her “scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance” (pg.56-57). The soldier’s armor acts like a mirror reflecting an expanded scarlet letter. The mirror exposes Hester true self in society and its expectation of shame from the scarlet letter on her bosom. The mirror shows Hester the significance of the scarlet letter and how her life from now on was dominated by it and she must carry on the shame. When Roger Chillingworth was talking with Hester, “he lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape…of his own image in a glass” (pg.125). Chillingworth looks into a mirror and realize he has turn into a devil. His reflection in the mirror reveals his dark and evil side that gives him a sense of horror. He now truly realizes his own image. The minister lock himself in a closet because he want to kept vigils as a payment of his repentance and sometimes, “viewing his own face in a looking glass by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it” (pg.96). The minister looks at himself through a looking glass, which acts like a mirror, and realize that he is a man of sin. The light produces by the mirror reflects Mr.Dimmesdale true self. He could hide his wrongdoing from the society, but he cannot really conceal it when he sees himself in a looking glass. The longer he conceals his sin, the more the symptom of guilt destroying his external
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