Inner Success In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

We believe inner success is entirely based on individual actions and thought, our actions may eventually guide us to our “end-point”, yet we have to consider people and concepts hold a great influence over our “individual” actions. Success can be achieves through the ideas od great people before us and the ordinary people around us. What happens if we don’t achieve the success that we are seeking? Sometimes when we are so caught up in what society deems “successful”, we forget what success truly means to us, we lose sight of our goals and tend to sway with the decisions of others. Do we mistake society’s beliefs with our own? Can we completely fail whilst searching for true success? With or without a plan; there is absolutely no guarantee we …show more content…
This includes the path we take; some paths will be filled with unnecessary struggles, and some journeys will be unsuccessful. Author of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, shows us Hester Prynne’s struggles. After being shunned from Puritan society, she still has goals. Hester’s goals are also very farfetched, however normal they seem today, the time frame in which this story takes place makes Hester 's “inner success” seem unachievable. Being a Puritan, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone would stray or even “believe” from the norm. The only character we see that is considered beyond the regular is Pearl, who is Hester’s daughter. While Pearl is always in the light, Hester is always in the dark and gloom. The only valuable treasure that Hester has is Pearl, whose father is Arthur Dimmesdale. A man, we assume Hester still loves because of her strength to stay in Boston, and this strength is what we call hope, for what Hester dearly clutches, a single thread of faith. And this faith in Dimmesdale, is what will shape, and dictate what Hester believes is success. We see start to see a pattern now, Dimmesdale who is the hope in Hester’s future is also a coward who is too afraid of confessing to his sins, he is jeopardizing his own and Hester 's happiness. Eventually when Dimmesdale is finally at the brink of his emotional and physical self yet at the peak of his materialistic career, he decides to confess, for Hester and the audience this is a good sign, more like too-good-to-be-true news. We see another flaw or unnecessary struggle in her path, Chillingworth who is yet another third party that endangers Hester’s path to success. Chillingworth who is ready to board the ship with Hester, Dimmesdale and Pearl, is suddenly not too happy about Dimmesdale newfound confidence and with that Chillingworth’s path to inner success is also ruined. The obstacles