The Scarlet Letter Essay

The Scarlet Letter takes place in seventeenth-century Boston, a puritan settlement where a young woman named Hester Prynne is convicted of adulterer and from that had a daughter named Pearl. On Hester's Chest was the letter "A" in scarlet which standed for adulterer and she finds out her husband named Roger Chillingworth has arrived to Boston to see her and later finds out what she did and throughout the book Chillingworth tries to get revenge on the one that committed adulterer named Arthur Dimmesdale, but he doesn't realize it and when he finds out they go after each other and Dimmesdale ends up telling the truth and dies in the end and so does Chillingworth later. There are a lot of themes in the Scarlet Letter like within each person exists the capacity for both good and evil, true repentance comes from within, one must have the courage to be true to one's self, and many more, but he shows how guilt can destroy someone much better than the rest. Nathaniel Hawthorne strongly believes that guilt destroys a person's body and soul and shows it well in The Scarlet Letter.

Guilt is a dangerous thing and will never end well if you continue to hold the guilt in. In the book The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows a lot of the effects of guilt on people. Guilt mainly ruins Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. As told before Roger Chillingworth is the wife of Hester Prynne and she committed adulterer with Arthur Dimmesdale and they find out what each of them did and never tell the truth to the people throughout the majority of the book. A lot of changes happen to Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, negative things physically and mentally throughout the book. Like with Arthur Dimmesdale he begins to go crazy guilt is ripping him apart and actually cuts a "A" into his chest to be similar to Hester Prynne but the "A" is still hiding behind his clothes and really isn't helping because he is still lying and is keeping the truth confined. Arthur Dimmesdale, as the book progresses started to look very aged and was sick in the beginning of the book because of the guilt already taking away from his body and soul. Those are some of the things that happened to Arthur Dimmesdale because of the guilt from not telling the truth about him committing adulterer.

Hester Prynne