The Scarlet Letter Essay

In “The Scarlet Letter,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a young woman named Hester Prynne moves to a puritan Boston society. When her husband does not follow her to America, she has an affair with the Reverend Dimmesdale. When she becomes pregnant, the town sentences her to a public shaming, and forces her to wear an A on her shoulder, marking her as an Adulterer for the rest of her life. Hester makes much effort to redeem herself from her sin, and ultimately becomes a functioning part of society.…

The Scarlet Letter is split into different scenes, each of which includes a confrontation between important characters in the story. Most of the influential scenes involve at least two of the main characters, being Hester Prynne, Pearl, Reverend Dimmesdale, and/or Roger Chillingworth. These scenes are separated by, “seven chapters (which) serve as interludes in the dramatic action” (Cowley 13). The first of these important scenes occurs in chapters two and three of the novel. In this scene,…

The Scarlet Letter’s author Nathaniel hawthorne, showed just how the Puritans were people who believed that the world was a place full of evil and that the only way to fight this evil and not become it was to follow god's word strictly and that the bible was the ultimate rule of the land and that nothing could challenge it . In the Scarlet Letter, Characters face both internal and external problems with themselves that symbolises the battle between light and dark, good vs evil, and right vs…

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, set in the time period of 1642, is about a young women by the name of Hester Prynne who had a baby with a preacher, who was not her husband. The people in her town send her to jail and later decided her punishment was to wear a scarlet letter “A”, for adultery, for the rest of her life. The day she is punished her husband, Roger Prynne, shows up in Boston, after he was believed to be dead for two years sailing from Europe to Boston. Roger…

and Chillingworth a victim being the husband. The letter "A" has multiple different meanings based on what part of the story it is. Hester wears this letter as a representation of the sin and it is meant to show the struggle with her moral choices and reduce her to a dull, lifeless woman. Hawthorne states "she had not known the weight until she felt the freedom"(138). The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne has different meanings for the letter "A" including Hester's sin of adultery, hard work…

When The Scarlet Letter was written in 1850 , society progressed away from the harsh theocracy of the Puritans and towards laissez-faire laws that allowed for greater religious freedom in the Boston area. Of course, Boston remains heavily Christian to-day. Through religion comes morality, and its influence is apparent in The Scarlet Letter: heaven or hell, sin and atonement, limited rights of women, and the feckless Puritan theocracy. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth all…

condemnation torments them forever. In both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, protagonists Hester Prynne and John Proctor struggle with guilt for their sin. Both the novel and playwright take place in 17th Century Puritan Massachusetts, when adultery is considered witchcraft, and punishable by death. After Hester Prynne has an affair with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, she receives a scarlet letter to represent her sin and display public humiliation. This…

In “The Scarlet Letter,” the Puritan’s cruelty towards Hester Prynne functions as a mean to develop Hawthorne’s idea of how people naturally react negatively towards others and in this case, those who have made mistakes. Hester’s mistake unfolds the plot and reveals truths about how Puritans, who were people that were persecuted due to their religion, punished her for breaking one of their rules given by God, which was to not commit adultery. This mistake also sparks the interest of another…

Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is set in Puritan Massachusetts, where ideals are based on conformity to strict religious laws. This idea of legalism is seen throughout the Scarlet Letter such as the scaffold and the Letter “A”. Yet Nathanial Hawthorne is not commenting on the price of sin but is questioning if puritanical laws of punishment should be held to the same stature as Forgiveness and compassion. The town’s people for her sin of adultery punish Hester; she is forced to be…

The sin Hester committed was meant to put her into “long seclusion from society” (144). However, the letter is not punishing her as it was set out to be. The people began to see her as a token of the town. However, now that time has past, people interpret scarlet letters as “Angels” (144). The people also describe her as an object of possession in their society by calling her “our Hester” (147). They view her as the woman who “is kind…