Pride And Fatality In The Scarlet Letter, By Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the novel The Scarlet Letter, the all-knowing narrator provides numerous examinations of the main character, Hester Prynne, and addresses the reader’s questions about her motivation to stay in Boston after receiving her punishment in the statement, “But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new birth…had converted the forest-land…into Hester Prynne’s wild and dreary, but life-long home” (Hawthorne 74), which reveals Hester’s belief that through enduring the hardship of pennance she can be cleansed, a theme of the novel. …show more content…
Once Hester adorns the scarlet letter, her sin becomes engraved into her existence, and her eventual return to Boston enables her to finally be with her love, Arthur Dimmesdale, and brings her salvation. The image of their gravestone concludes the novel and demonstrates that their suffering was not futile. Arthur and Hester’s reunion resolves and brings light to an otherwise dark novel. If Hester had not stayed in Boston initially and returned finally, or she had not served her penance, then she would not receive closure at the end of her time. The themes of sin and punishment throughout the novel exemplify that forgiveness, and ultimately salvation, can be achieved, as seen in the conclusion of The Scarlet