Alec Mitchell, get down here right now! screamed my mother. Ah crap, I thought to myself, I had forgot to take the trash out. As I began my walk of shame downstairs I already knew my punishment, grounded for the rest of the night, because I had committed this crime many times before. My mom’s discipline was not going to my head. Similarly, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter the residents of a small, Puritan town in 17th century Boston clashed with the concept of punishment for two young adulterers, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Hawthorne masterfully portrays the townspeople’s punishment of Hester as trivial and the self-punishment of Dimmesdale as poignant in order to prove that the punishment imposed by others on a person
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Arthur Dimmesdale was punished under a mountain of guilt which ate away at his soul and, ultimately, destroyed him. In addition, Hawthorne included self-punishing characters in his other works which further conveyed his idea that self-punishment impacted a person more than the punishment put on a person by other people. Hester was punished for adultery by the town by imprisonment, public shaming, and a permanent scarlet A on her bosom, but it all had little effect on Hester herself. Hester was fine with the townspeople having a deep hatred with her and did not let their attempts to tear her down get to her. On Hester’s way up to the scaffold, she was not focused on the hundreds of people shaming her, but on herself and her past experiences (Hawthorne 45). If Hester was worried about what they thought she would have been having a panic attack, but she stayed strong. In addition, Hawthorne included Hester’s thoughts about her past life in Europe in order to illustrate that Hester will be the same person as before her punishment. Hester was unaffected by her shaming, thus she was not truly punished by it, proving the punishment imposed by others has little effect on Hester. By including Hester’s thoughts on her way up to the
Arthur Dimmesdale was punished under a mountain of guilt which ate away at his soul and, ultimately, destroyed him. In addition, Hawthorne included self-punishing characters in his other works which further conveyed his idea that self-punishment impacted a person more than the punishment put on a person by other people. Hester was punished for adultery by the town by imprisonment, public shaming, and a permanent scarlet A on her bosom, but it all had little effect on Hester herself. Hester was fine with the townspeople having a deep hatred with her and did not let their attempts to tear her down get to her. On Hester’s way up to the scaffold, she was not focused on the hundreds of people shaming her, but on herself and her past experiences (Hawthorne 45). If Hester was worried about what they thought she would have been having a panic attack, but she stayed strong. In addition, Hawthorne included Hester’s thoughts about her past life in Europe in order to illustrate that Hester will be the same person as before her punishment. Hester was unaffected by her shaming, thus she was not truly punished by it, proving the punishment imposed by others has little effect on Hester. By including Hester’s thoughts on her way up to the