The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne Essay - 879 Words

Nathaniel Hawthorne resisted the idea that humanity had divine potential and acknowledged the reality of evil. Hawthorne believed that every society needed to have a jail and grave yard, â€Å" The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison† (2331). He thought that people are naturally evil and sin so a jail was needed to keep evil people and influence away from society. Hawthorne’s beliefs are seen in The Scarlet Letter. The reoccurring theme of â€Å"the power of blackness† and the uneven balance of transcendental and†¦show more content†¦As his plan progresses he starts living with the minister and starts to drain the life out of Dimmesdale to expose his secret. As a doctor, Chillingworth is supposed to help save the min isters failing health, but the evil in him is using his poor health to his advantage. After Chillingworth finally hears the secret from Dimmesdale himself, he continues to have an evil spirit, â€Å"†¦old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office† (2396). Hester believes that her scarlet letter gives her a new sense of power. The letter gives her the power to see the sins on the hearts of others. However it doesn’t make her feel better it makes her feel worse. It causes her to feel as if not everyone sins and that there is still someone in the world that hasn’t sinned. Herman Melville described Hawthorne’s work as an â€Å"uneven balance† between transcendental and puritan view. Transcendentalists believe that man is born essentially good while Puritans believe in total depravity, humans are naturally evil. The unbalance describe by Melville is that there is evil in the world and people are naturally evil, but nature will still respond with forgiveness. This is a conflict in The Scarlett Letter. At the beginning of the novel, the scene opens withShow MoreRelatedThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1242 Words   |  5 PagesLYS PAUL Modern Literature Ms. Gordon The Scarlet Letter The scarlet letter is book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne who is known as one the most studied writers because of his use of allegory and symbolism. He was born on July 4, 1804 in the family of Nathaniel, his father, and Elizabeth Clark Hathorne his mother. Nathaniel added â€Å"W† to his name to distance himself from the side of the family. His father Nathaniel, was a sea captain, and died in 1808 with a yellow fever while at sea. That was aRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne960 Words   |  4 Pages3H 13 August 2014 The novel, The Scarlet Letter, was written by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne and was published in 1850 (1). It is a story about the Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, set around 1650 (2). The story is written in the third person with the narrator being the author. The common thread that runs through this novel is Hawthorne’s apparent understanding of the beliefs and culture of the Puritans in America at that time. But Hawthorne is writing about events in a societyRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter, By Nathaniel Hawthorne919 Words   |  4 Pagessymbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s â€Å"The Scarlet Letter†. Symbolism is when an object is used in place of a different object. Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most symbolic writers in all of American history. In â€Å"The Scarlet Letter†, the letter â€Å"A† is used to symbolize a variety of different concepts. 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The Scarlet Letter is a revolutionary novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne examining the ugliness, complexity, and strength of the human spirit and character that shares new ideas about independence and the struggles women faced in 17th century America. Throughout the novel, Hester’s refusal to remove the scarlet letterRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1319 Words   |  6 PagesPrynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are subject to this very notion in Nathaniel Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter. Hester simply accepted that what she had done was wrong, whereas Dimmesdale, being a man of high regard, did not want to accept the reality of what he did. Similar to Hester and Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth allows his emotions to influence his life; however, his influence came as the result of hi s anger. Throughout the book, Hawthorne documents how Dimmesdale and Hester s different ways of dealingRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1714 Words   |  7 PagesSome two hundred years following the course of events in the infamous and rigid Puritan Massachusetts Colony in the 1600s, Nathaniel Hawthorne, descendant of a Puritan magistrate, in the 19th century, published The Scarlet Letter. Wherein such work, Hawthorne offered a social critique against 17th Massachusetts through the use of complex and dynamic characters and literary Romanticism to shed light on said society’s inherent contradiction to natural order and natural law. In his conclusive statements