Effects of Sin in The Scarlet Letter
In Adam"s fall, we sinned all." This old Sunday-school saying applies well to Nathaniel Hawthorne's characters in The Scarlet Letter. The main characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, as well as the townspeople, all sinned. The story is a study of the effects of sin on the hearts and minds of Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. Sin strengthens Hester, humanizes Dimmesdale, and turns Chillingworth into a demon. Hester Prynne's sin was adultery. This sin was regarded very seriously by the Puritans, and was often punished by death. Hester's punishment was to endure a public shaming on a scaffold for three hours and wear a scarlet letter "A" on her chest for the rest of her life in the town. Although Hawthorne does not pardon Hester's sin, he considers it less serious than those of Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. Hester's sin was a sin of passion. This sin was openly acknowledged as she wore the "A" on her chest. Hester did not commit the greatest sin of the novel. She did not deliberately mean to commit her sin or mean to hurt others. Hester's sin is that her passions and love were of more importance to her than the Puritan moral code. This is shown when she says to Dimmesdale, "What we did had a
Her pursuit in telling the truth is evident in the lines, "In all things else, I have striven to be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity save when thy good--the life--thy fame--were put in question! Then I consented a deception. Chillingworth does look back and sympathize. He is a minister and every week gets up on his pulpit to hear his congregation's sins. He knew she did not love him, and he was not fit to make her a proper husband. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Somehow, Dimmesdale is too weak to confess his own sin. it may be that they are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature. He must assume the responsibility for having destroyed himself. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten the other side!" Even though Hester's sin is the one the book is titled after and centered around, it is not nearly the worst sin committed. "It seemed not so wild a dream,--old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,--that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. His first sin is one against nature, and Hester more specifically. He must act as if nothing has happened. It is on the very scaffold that he first pleaded with Hester to reveal his identity that he now releases his secret. Pearl is the embodiment of her parents' sin.
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