Adultery In The Scarlet Letter Essay

Adultery. A concept viewed with the upmost disgust in the eyes of many. However, sometimes a hated act like this can open the eyes to a truth or underlying message that will instill a sense of sickening reality into the conscience. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece The Scarlet Letter, he artfully crafts a story full of suspense, grief, ignorance, love, and reveals the hypocrisy behind the Puritan faith. Set in Puritan influenced colonial Boston during the seventeenth century, the story follows the consequences of an act of adultery committed by the protagonist Hester Prynne and how it affects the other characters of the novel over a seven year span, such as her ex-husband Roger Chillingworth and the main minister Arthur Dimmesdale. The Scarlet Letter is an emotionally driven story that forces the mind to dwell over …show more content…
The organization the novel is smooth, as it is broken up in to traditional chapters and the story follows a linear pattern so the reader can follow the general plot pretty easily. At times it can get a little murky and confusing due to the diction that is used, as the language that is used in the novel does not occur frequently in today’s books. An example of this is found when Hawthorne is discussing how Dimmesdale is dealing with his sin. He states, “that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and desert path, faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doom which he was now expiating” (Hawthorne 401). It could be argued that the reader could be following this sentence all the way until the reach the word “expiating” in which they could become confused since they might not know the meaning. This also applies to Hawthorne’s writing style, as it follows the British style of the time, which again can be confusing if the reader is trying to analyze and find the deeper meanings in the