The Significance Of The Scarlett Letter In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter in The Scarlet Letter The Puritans during the 1600s did not take sin lightly, anyone who disobeyed the law was heavily persecuted. In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, this is depicted through the character, crime, and punishment of Hester Prynne, who has committed adultery and is sentenced to wear the scarlet letter to publicly show her shame. This scarlet letter A plays a key role throughout Hawthorne’s novel as it is vividly described throughout it, it symbolizes multiple people, places, and objects, and it is central to the main theme illustrated in the novel. Hawthorne’s usage of the letter A and all its details show its importance throughout the novel. It is Hester Prynne who has made the letter …show more content…
The scarlet letter is always a topic of conversation and townspeople wonder how it affects Hester’s life,“‘I leave thee alone: alone with thy infant and the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?’” (Hawthorne 81). Hester’s own daughter, Pearl, cannot even recognize her without the letter, “At length, assuming a singular air of authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her mother’s breast” (Hawthorne 198). When Dimmesdale reveals his own letter to the crowd, they become astonished and are at a loss of words, “With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to describe that revelation” (Hawthorne 238). Everything in Hawthorne’s novel is revolved around the scarlet letter …show more content…
The scarlet letter is the main topic that townspeople talk about and the novel's themes are revolved around the scarlet letter. In the beginning of the novel, Hawthorne’s usage of expressive terminology to describe how beautiful and unique the scarlet letter is. Not only does the scarlet letter symbolize Hester’s identity, but also adultery, charity, and able. Between the 1600’s and now, nothing has changed on how people keep their attention on others past mistakes. Everyone is constantly judging others by what they have done and not what that person is doing to fix it. In the novel, although people give Hester slack for all of her charity work, they always return back to treating her with disrespect, comparable to how people do not surrender their opinions on others