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 Scarlet Letter takes place in a town inhabited by Puritans in the seventeenth century. These Puritans were known to be strictly religious, basing their laws solely on spiritual values. However, they seemed to have slightly strayed from their religious principles when it came to holidays. The reader can see this clearly in the novel’s second chapter, where the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, describes the whole Puritan community setting aside a day solely to punish one of their neighbors because…

The “A” Hester wears on her breast is a symbol or sin and adultery. Hawthorne first describes the letter in chapter two as “illuminating on her bosom.” 47 Immediately the reader can tell this letter is going to be important it makes her different and takes her out of “ordinary relations with humanity, and [encloses] her in a sphere by herself.” 47 It represents the isolation she will soon live for…

without the constant pressure imposed on us by others. We seek the soft comfort of nature if only to escape the the rigid norms of society, and especially if we are living in the Puritan society described by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his book The Scarlet Letter. The story takes place in 1642 in Boston, Massachusetts, and follows Hester Prynne, a woman shunned to the outskirts of the town by the Puritan townspeople for committing adultery. Throughout the book, Hawthorne draws a distinct line between…

The moral consequences of sin always bestows itself upon the wrongdoer, whether he or she is a strong and independent individual or even a figure of God. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale must live in shame for the rest of their lives because of the adultery they committed with each other. Later in the story however, Hester progressively becomes accepting of her sin and it strengthens her sense of individuality while Dimmesdale hides it…

The dominant gender always, without question, being male. Hawthorne offers his opinion on the inequality between genders at the time throughout the passage. After reading chapter XII, “Another View of Hester,” from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, “The Scarlet Letter,” it is evident that Hawthorne’s use of tone and diction represent the outlook of Hester Prynne on her existence, and that of women in general. To begin, tone, without a doubt is utilized majorly to project Hester Prynne’s opinion on her…

Hester changes in many ways during the course of The Scarlet Letter. She changes because of both internal, and external factors. Hester is motivated by community, religion, guilt, unhappiness, punishment, Chillingworth, and the scarlet letter itself. The way in which Hester is viewed within the community changes throughout the novel. In the beginning Hester is viewed by the community as a sinful, but beautiful young woman, yet towards the end of the novel the people in society begin to view her…

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne gives readers a taste of what life was like in a society controlled by Puritans. It is a miserable life, as Hawthorne shows readers through the degradation of Hester Prynne, the adulterous protagonist, who has to bear being isolated from society. In the sidelines, there is Reverend Dimmesdale, who is tortured internally by his secret “sin” of having an affair with Prynne. And while all of this is going on, Roger Chillingworth, Prynne’s revenge-ridden…

there will be challenges in life, and the ability to fight them without compromising one’s character shows the true manifestation of power and strength. Hester overcomes an unfathomable adversity, displaying her inner resilience. In novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne asserts the power of Hester through the surrounding imagery of the scaffold scenes. Hawthorn forces this message with the continual incorporation of the scaffold as the physical representation of this adversity in the…

In the "Scarlet Letter", written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the characters, Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth exhibits a plethora of examples of rugged individualism. Hester Prynne is an "inmate" of a puritan crime, that she committed as an adulteress. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, disappeared and his fate remained to be unknown. Hester Prynne believing he's gone for good, becomes involved with another man and then becomes pregnant with his baby. She now has to raise a child on her own, due…