Scarlet Letter 9009
People live with lies every day. Everyone from the President of theUnited States to the poorest beggar in New York City has told a lie. Whitelies, gray lies, and plain old dirty fat lies are strewn forth every day likewater from a fountain. The only true difference between them is the amountof guilt they place on the liar. If they feel guilt, then they suffer greatlythroughout their lives, from lots of small indiscretions or just once largeone. The majority of the people in this world have the ability to alleviatetheir guilt through some kind of penance, but for some that is not enough. Anything they do can not repeal the feeling of guilt and the knowledge theydid something wrong. People like this make themselves sick with worryand regret, and they often die of their disease: depression. Those peoplewho do manage to drop their guilt become productive members of societyagain because they have reconnected with the rest of the human race. Theydon't deny their guilt or their crimes, they just acknowledge there are somethings they cannot change, they can just try to make up for them. In TheScarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne the decision of the characters to
The authorNathaniel Hawthorne wrote it best: "Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freelyto the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may beinferred. And, like Chillingsworth said at the end of thebook, a confession would have ended Chillingsworth's evil prematurely: "There was no place where thou couldst have escaped me!" (236) In anobvious parallel to Hester's stout and quick admittance, Dimmsdale is thecontradiction: he suffers great agony and fails to admit his sin until minutesbefore his death (a cowardly way out). Dimmsdale wasn't, and that just madehim a gigantic hypocrite. " (pg#) If you don't let the world share in yourguilt, it will all be upon you, and only you. He used a bloodyscourge to inflict a hideous wound upon himself in a misguided attempt togain penance: "Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmsdale had beguna course of penance: which he afterwards, in so many futile methods,followed out- by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. The guilty in this world willalways have a choice, no matter how difficult it is. He led wondrously moving sermonson honesty and the fate of those who did not come clean with God. Dimmsdale are never mentioned in the book (and highly debatedeven now) I firmly believe that they are what kept him alive those sevenyears. " (240) The keyword in that quote is "futile"; the theme of his denial cannot be emphasizedenough. WhileHester Pryne admits her sins and resolves them over time through hercharity work, Arthur Dimmsdale bottles up his sins and, even though hephysically tortures himself, cannot resolve his great misdeeds. etermines the quality of their lives. Even the Puritan people who openly despised her at the time she exposedher sin, eventually were won over by her vast charity work. Toflee would have led her along a completely different path, one of denial.
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Acceptance Essays
