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Weakness In The Scarlet Letter

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If you were stuck having to live with a sin which everyone condemned you for, would you choose to be frail or strong? One may argue that the feeling of weakness itself has the ability to cause a great burden on them. Weakness itself can drastically affect a person physically and mentally. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, human weakness plays a significant role due to the fact that it progressively destroys the characters Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne who both committed adultery. In the first chapter, the narrator effectively informs the reader that weakness is, in fact, a major part of this novel with the following statement: “It [rose bush] may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom that may be found along …show more content…

Most importantly, she was tremendously isolated and shunned from Puritan society. A particular instance is whenever Hester is released from prison, and it’s indicated that, “Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and body their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passion” (Hawthorne 32). Hester’s sin effectiveness is carried on further beyond her prison sentence and inevitably turned her into a symbol of sin. Those who were looked up to in the Puritan society portrayed her as a living lesson of what not to be. She eventually isolates herself in a small cottage near the woods and although her happiness is restored through her daughter and sewing, she is never completely able to escape the mental burden of her sin. Pearl’s reaction towards the scarlet letter is shown in, “Weeks, it was true, might sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze might never once …show more content…

They both deal with a certain extent of consequences in a variety of ways, neither fully satisfacted with the results of their sin. The progressive deterioration of Hester and Dimmesdale’s health, considering both mental and physical, contributed to their downfalls. This comes to show that the outcome of a sin can indeed affect one’s life in ways

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