Mistakes And Guilty In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
Mistakes and the Guilty
Herman Melville said in Moby Dick, “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme…”(chptr. 104).This is a statement that can fit any story or book, even The Scarlet Letter. The three prominent themes in The Scarlet Letter show that people are unforgiving, will judge, and their opinions will always mean something. The mistakes of others can make you feel guilty. The quintessential themes of The Scarlet Letter revolve around personal guilt and the judgments of others.
We have all experienced people’s unforgiving ways, and we all know that there are those that will judge based on your mistakes. This is very prominent in The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne, the main character, was judged profoundly by her community. The townspeople of Salem, Massachusetts shunned her for one mistake: Adultery. On page 102, they are making her an outcast, “in all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it.”(Hawthorne,102). The townspeople keep their distance even after a while. She was doomed to be judged by them, and so was her daughter.
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The narrator even explains that Pearl was “her mother’s only treasure”(Hawthorne, 111). Yet, even though Pearl was her mother’s treasure, she was the townspeople’s annoyance. Pearl had done nothing, but others will judge your family’s character based on you. Pearl was teased tremendously! Governor Bellingham even said “There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions in holiday time, and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule.”(Hawthorne, 133-134). She was a child, and adults, that were viewed as mature, were bullying her. She did nothing and the worst judgment is our own. Guilt can get to
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699 Words | 3 PagesNathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter focuses on a small Puritan town in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century. Through the use of setting, The Scarlet Letter reflects the romantic idea of society as a destructive influence on humanity while presenting nature as a transcendent experience. In the novel, the town and the forest serve as opposing settings that affect how the characters express themselves and interact with others. The town forcibly prohibits the expression of true emotion, while conversely, the forest serves as an escape from the harsh rules of Puritan society.
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731 Words | 3 PagesWhat makes Pearl an important symbol is she is a living reminder of Hester’s transgression and Pearl’s wild, passionate nature. Excluded outside of society and sometimes thought to be the Devil’s child, she is “her mother’s only treasure…that no human sympathy could reach” and “rather an airy sprite” (pg. 61, 63). Having keen insight, she figures out what really happened between the characters before the adults find out. Because of this, she displays curious signs of recognition or defiance towards certain people she encounters. When the truth is finally revealed to the public, she is no longer a symbol but a normal human
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Diction In Scarlet Letter
857 Words | 4 PagesSociety has had a long history of belittling both people and their individuality, and also not allowing people to reach their full potential. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne is constantly talking about society in a negative way. Hawthorne himself is a transcendentalist who views society as a terrible institution and a way to stop people from reaching their true potential. Hawthorne's view of both puritan society and society during his time plays into his view and characterization of Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne is a fictional character who committed a sin and was publicly shamed and shunned from society because of it.
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1092 Words | 5 PagesHer fellow citizens treat her in such a way that “...every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere.” (Hawthorne 72) The idea of harsh punishment for sins was the broadest of these Puritan values. Hester Prynne was punished with public humiliation and “with only that one ornament, -the scarlet letter,- which it was her doom to wear” (Hawthorne 77). This brings into effect another part of Puritan society, the sin of one community member was the sin of all, ensuring that God's chastisement would fall on the entire community.
Examples Of Adultery In The Great Gatsby
1557 Words | 7 PagesAdultery- In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne Commits adultery. Once she has committed she gets shamed for life. Adultery is also a very important point throughout the story. It shows how it can wreak havoc on anyone’s life.
Guilt In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
908 Words | 4 PagesGuit has the power to make you do things you never thought of doing. It forces you to lie, hurt yourself or others, and slowly eats you up from the inside. Guilt controls you to the point where it makes you blind towards your own actions. The novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne shows all of these characteristics of guilt through one character. Dimmesdale from the beginning of the novel till the end demonstrates how guilt destroyed him from the inside.
Exceptionalism In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
586 Words | 3 Pages(Hawthorne 118). Because even the most holy man in the community succumbs to sin, Hawthorne clearly condemns Winthrop's standard of a sinless society, deciding that ultimately no community can achieve that exceptional standard. Hawthorne also writes about family, but deviates from Winthrop’s ideal as Pearl does not have a father who provides for her. Hester, a woman, has to “supply food for her thriving infant and herself” (Hawthorne 74), which she does by selling her needlework. By openly breaking Winthrop’s trope of the father as the provider, Hawthorne again rebels against Winthrop’s view of exceptionalism, and demonstrates that Puritan exceptionalism is unattainable.
The Scarlet Letter Rhetorical Analysis
1014 Words | 5 PagesMegan Parzych 4 Ms. Krygier Honors English 10 26 November 2017 Views on the Scarlet Letter In history, the Puritans were very strict and liked punishment. They looked upon people who have sinned in a very negative way. This is evident in The Scarlet Letter. The townspeople looked at Hester Prynne and her sin in a very strict way and wanted her to be punished greatly.
Scarlet Letter Dbq
2184 Words | 9 PagesThe Puritans were not quick to start spreading the drama throughout the town even though they were “good and perfect”. Hawthorne calls out the puritan in the scarlet letter by “..being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived,”(pg.) along with that the puritans quickly avoided Hester and Pearl Prynne. Hawthorne writes that the parents would tell their children to not play with the demon child which is what Pearl was called. They would stare straight at Hester and her daughter along with gossiping behind them. What the puritans were saying was not always just one way, some of what the Puritans were saying was extremely hypocritical since they acted similarly to the
How Hester Prynne Changes In Scarlet Letter
941 Words | 4 PagesWe are all sinners, no matter how hard we try to hide our faults, they always seem to come back, one way or another. Written in the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us Hester Prynne and how one sin can change her life completely. Hester Prynne changes a great deal throughout The Scarlet Letter. Through the view of the Puritans, Hester is an intense sinner; she has gone against the Puritan way of life committing the highest act of sin, adultery. For committing such a sinful act, Hester must wear the scarlet letter while also having to bear stares from those that gossip about her.
Expiate Guilt In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne
364 Words | 2 PagesHave you felt the need to exculpate your sins, for your guilt is eating you inside? The Scarlet Letter gives you the experience to suffer with the characters and their desire to expiate their sinful selves and at the end you would think that all of their suffering would be mollified and they would live happily ever after like every other popular story, but it had a different twist. To be candor ,when I finished reading the book I was pretty disappointed, for the characters in the story who suffered from beginning to end didn’t really liberate and feel repentance for their sins or restart their life like the human beams they were. I love twist endings, but I feel like the story could’ve of ended differently. I felt like Hester didn’t really
Essay On Evil In The Scarlet Letter
719 Words | 3 PagesThe townspeople “[began] to look upon the scarlet letter as a token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” This quote exemplifies how sin is not a death sentence for Hester. Through hard work and charity it allowed the rigid Puritan society to see her as something different, and as someone who would not let society define who she was. Hester, thus, was not only able to change herself, but also the image in which society viewed her by working hard to benefit the public. Likewise, the scarlet letter which was supposed to represent sin was instead “fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.”
Hypocrisy Of The Puritan Society In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne
936 Words | 4 PagesIn the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)
Essay On Literary Devices In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
499 Words | 2 PagesLiterary Devices in The Scarlet Letter Literary devices are often used to capture a reader’s attention in a text. Nathaniel Hawthorne used many different types of literary devices in his book The Scarlet Letter. He uses symbolism to give hidden meaning to elements in the story, conflict to make the story interesting, and allusion to make references to historical events (ex. biblical references). While reading The Scarlet Letter, the literary devices did not jump out at me, but now as I reflect upon them they help me understand the book well. Literary devices can make a passage have a whole different meaning.
Guilt In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
817 Words | 4 PagesWhen the townspeople find out that Hester was pregnant and that the baby is not her husband's child, Roger Chillingworth, the whole community shames her. In chapter two Hawthorne says, “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 shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life” ( II 48). Hawthorne portrays Hester Prynne as being this independent woman who does not let the thoughts of the townspeople influence her life. In chapter two, Hawthorne says “In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A” (II:45).
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