Sin In The Scarlet Letter

Sin is a religious concept that is done by everyone, yet at the same time is frowned upon in society, making humanity look like a hypocritical hive mind. Many concepts and examples of sin are shown in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel “The Scarlet Letter.” Throughout the story, sin is portrayed by almost all characters in the book, yet the ones who have been the most notorious in displaying sin are Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Reverend Dimmesdale. Hester Prynne is the main protagonist in the novel and shamed by society due to the crime of adultery that she committed with Reverend Dimmesdale. She is arrogant about her sin of adultery and is portrayed as someone who is rebellious in nature. She sins not only in the sense of her crime …show more content…
This is clearly seen in the story when it is said, "A pure hand needs no glove to cover it." (Chap. 12, The Sexton). Inferencing that if a person is free of sin then she would not have to hide it from society. The quote covers the root of Hester’s problem addressing that if she did not originally sin then she would not have been put into the largely unfavorable situation that she was put in at all. This connects deeply into how she is one of the three to commit the most important sins in the novel. This sense of discrimination that is caused by her sins is shown later at which point it is said, “Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,—at her, the child of honorable parents,—at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman, —at her, who had once been innocent, —as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.” (chap. 5 paragraph 1) This quotation focuses on how she is now shamed and discriminated by the entire town due to her sins. She ignores the amount of discrimination however and focuses more on herself and her child while at the same time examining the behaviors of society. Though she manages to take ignorance to the discriminations of her sins, she finds herself being even hypocritical while with Dimmesdale when they talk about Pearl loving …show more content…
He quickly finds himself becoming corrupt over the idea of having his revenge on Hester and Dimmesdale for committing adultery. This idea of revenge soon becomes the concept of pure torture causing him to drive Dimmesdale to the point of insanity and in the process causing him to become insane. The beginning of chapter eleven is a perfect example of this philosophical torture that is put on Dimmesdale at the point in which the narrator statesnovel reads, “The intellect of Roger Chillingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy.”. (Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 11 Paragraph 1) Here we can see that not only has Chillingworth 's torture affected DImmesdale poorly, but that it is also torturing Hester to see DImmesdale in such a poor state of life. In retrospect it would seem simpler for Chillingworth to just take the appropriate way of getting revenge by reporting Dimmesdale for his crimes, but instead he feels like taking matters into his own hands by giving Dimmesdale a torture that he sees to be justified. We can see that this statement is true when Dimmesdale says “What