The only Thing Worth Writing About: The Human Heart in Conflict

The purpose of literature is to show the internal struggles of man or woman as he or she attempt to live in the world around them. In order to get meaning out of a piece of literature, the reader must be able to relate to the character and his struggles. William Faulkner believes a great piece of writing needs to reflect the human heart in conflict with itself. Any other story is doomed and mired in the objective instead of rooted in the human soul. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne establishes conflict within the human heart with the characters: Hester Prynne, who demonstrates purity versus sin, Arthur Dimmesdale, who demonstrates love versus, and Roger Chillingworth, who demonstrates good versus evil. Together, Hawthorne uses these characters to fulfill Faulkner's requirements of a writer's main task in writing. Dick Gregory, the author of Shame, uses two types of shame: shame, in which is inflicted on people by other people and shame, in which people receive for acting incorrectly, to explain the internal conflict with the human heart, thus, fulfilling Faulkner's reasons of what a writer should write about.

A person is pure until they choose to commit sin. Hester Prynne commits sin in The Scarlet Letter by deciding to commit adultery. Because of her actions, the Puritans force her to wear a scarlet letter "A" and stand on a scaffold for four hours with Pearl, the living truth of her sin. Purity is the freedom from sin or guilt, while sin is a transgression of moral law. Whereas purity sets a line between the ideal and the real, sin crosses that line and even breaks it. People can be changed by their sin. Hawthorne justifies the fact that Hester matures and becomes maternal by her sin; "…the scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,-stern and wild ones,-and they had made her strong, but taught her much… (Hawthorne 197). A result of Hester's sin is that it taught her to be strong and brave. She suffered the shame, yet she was still able to be kind and fortunate to others in the end. She looks inside of her heart to find out what the best decision is. Hawthorne works to achieve the purpose of a writer through the character of Hester Prynne.

Roger Chillingworth is occasionally linked to Satan several times throughout The Scarlet Letter. Chillingworth readily idenitifies himself with a fiend in connection with his torturing of Arthur Dimmesdale; "… a mortal man, witrh once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment!" (Hawthorne 166-167). Satan is commonly referred to as a fiend. Throughout the novel, Chillingworth's personality