Literary analysis of the Scarlet letter related to guilt
The Scarlett Letter
Guilt clutches at the lives of many of the Earth’s inhabitants. Some feel it more than others, and for different reasons. The Scarlet Letter portrays one of the more serious reasons for guilt, adultery. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlett Letter in 1850. This book is about the adulterous lives of Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale. Hester has been forced to wear a “Scarlett” letter A for the rest of her life to repent for her crime. Dimmesdale, while he bares no direct physical sign of his crime, unlike Hester, still feels an equal amount of guilt, maybe even more so than Hester. Guilt affects people in different ways. Hester Prynne was mentally affected by guilt, while Dimmesdale's guilt affected him physically causing him to become weak and sickly.
As the novel progresses, the reader sees Dimmesdale’s guilt control and eventually corrupt his life because of his hypocrisy and unwillingness to confess his secret sin. The guilt Dimmesdale feels causes him to hide among the higher peoples of the town, so his secret will not be found. Only when told of his responsibility to obtain Hester’s confession and repentance, does he reluctantly stand up to question her. Hawthorne describes Dimmesdale as he walks to the end of the balcony, “there was an air about this young minister, – an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look, – as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own”(75; ch3). Dimmesdale’s cowardly heart and hypocrisy show themselves by him hiding behind his question to Hester. He knows full well the answer to his question of who the father of her child is. He uses the question to hide, because no one in the town will suspect him. Though Dimmesdale indeed feels guilt over his sin, his cowardly heart still shows itself by not being able to stand up and confess his sin publicly.
The guilt in his heart begins to
Guilt clutches at the lives of many of the Earth’s inhabitants. Some feel it more than others, and for different reasons. The Scarlet Letter portrays one of the more serious reasons for guilt, adultery. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlett Letter in 1850. This book is about the adulterous lives of Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale. Hester has been forced to wear a “Scarlett” letter A for the rest of her life to repent for her crime. Dimmesdale, while he bares no direct physical sign of his crime, unlike Hester, still feels an equal amount of guilt, maybe even more so than Hester. Guilt affects people in different ways. Hester Prynne was mentally affected by guilt, while Dimmesdale's guilt affected him physically causing him to become weak and sickly.
As the novel progresses, the reader sees Dimmesdale’s guilt control and eventually corrupt his life because of his hypocrisy and unwillingness to confess his secret sin. The guilt Dimmesdale feels causes him to hide among the higher peoples of the town, so his secret will not be found. Only when told of his responsibility to obtain Hester’s confession and repentance, does he reluctantly stand up to question her. Hawthorne describes Dimmesdale as he walks to the end of the balcony, “there was an air about this young minister, – an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look, – as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own”(75; ch3). Dimmesdale’s cowardly heart and hypocrisy show themselves by him hiding behind his question to Hester. He knows full well the answer to his question of who the father of her child is. He uses the question to hide, because no one in the town will suspect him. Though Dimmesdale indeed feels guilt over his sin, his cowardly heart still shows itself by not being able to stand up and confess his sin publicly.
The guilt in his heart begins to