Hipocrisy, the practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess, falseness (Dictionary). The Puritan society revealed in the novel is described as very hypocritical, they express things they don't really believe and close their eyes to those they don't want to see. As the novel is developing Hawthorne shows you how the people of such society act with hypocrisy, all of them except for Hester. She was the only one who acted with integrity and accepted her punishment for what she had done. The best example of falseness is minister Dimmesdale that through all of the novel acts as if nothing has happened when he was the one who committed the terrible sin. Through Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, he portrays
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At the very beginning of the story when Hester is at the scaffold and doesn't want to confess who the other sinner was everyone was trying to convince her to confess even Dimmesdale. "What can thy silence do for him, except to tempt him---yea, compel him, as it were---to add hypocrisy to sin?" (The Scarlet Letter). Dimmesdale as much as a hypocrite he is was encouraging Hester to reveal the father of her child, he was asking her how bad can it be. In a way the author is letting us know that the minister wanted Hester to reveal the sin, he didn't want to do it himself and that shows you how much of a coward he is and in a way he knows that the town wouldn't have believed her, they would have closed their eyes to the big …show more content…
He wanted to highlight the hypocrisy of the society and the people that make it up. The characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the very society that the characters lived in, were steeped in hypocrisy. He was not subtle in hiding what he thought, he wrote it in a way where the reader can easily find where hypocrisy takes place. He portrays the reality of the society, he tells the story just like it was, without hiding the reality of things. Although the book is written in other times that does not mean its lessons are not applicable to the world we live
At the very beginning of the story when Hester is at the scaffold and doesn't want to confess who the other sinner was everyone was trying to convince her to confess even Dimmesdale. "What can thy silence do for him, except to tempt him---yea, compel him, as it were---to add hypocrisy to sin?" (The Scarlet Letter). Dimmesdale as much as a hypocrite he is was encouraging Hester to reveal the father of her child, he was asking her how bad can it be. In a way the author is letting us know that the minister wanted Hester to reveal the sin, he didn't want to do it himself and that shows you how much of a coward he is and in a way he knows that the town wouldn't have believed her, they would have closed their eyes to the big …show more content…
He wanted to highlight the hypocrisy of the society and the people that make it up. The characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the very society that the characters lived in, were steeped in hypocrisy. He was not subtle in hiding what he thought, he wrote it in a way where the reader can easily find where hypocrisy takes place. He portrays the reality of the society, he tells the story just like it was, without hiding the reality of things. Although the book is written in other times that does not mean its lessons are not applicable to the world we live