Use Of Prynne In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter'

People in Puritan society were taught to think and live a certain way all according to the Bible, yet author Nathaniel Hawthorne creates a novel that goes against the views he has been forced to live by. Hawthorne uses the main character Hester Prynne to depict his inner struggles in writing, of what he sees as the hypocrisy of puritan society. Hawthorne uses syntax, tone and imagery to convey this hypocrisy through Hester’s supposed “sin”. Hawthorne utilizes syntax to structure The Scarlet Letter as a plane of fiction set in reality. His use of syntax portrays the changes that occur in specific people throughout the story through Dimmesdale, the Villagers, Pearl, and Hester herself. Dimmesdale changed when he began to use his sermons as a way to alleviate the guilt he acquired when he committed adultery with Hester. “As a man who had onced sinned but has kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound…” As a minister that lives by the Bible, he violated one of the most sacred beliefs …show more content…
Though he shows all the struggles Hester faces in the wake of her sin, Hawthorne through Hester passionately portrays her innermost thoughts and feelings pertaining to her situation according to Hawthorne's contradictory views of puritan society. “God gave me the child!” cried she. “He gave her in requital of all things else which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness---she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me, too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!” Yet with everyone against her Hester still continues to fight, her decision to keep Pearl perfectly conveyed Hawthorne’s passionate tone through Hester’s fierce resolve of her decision to keep