Scarlett Letter Essay

Corresponding Themes
Anthony Dargan
January 5, 2013
English 3B Hawthorne uses common themes throughout many of his stories, such as the novel The Scarlet Letter and the short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” The common theme shared between these two stories is corruption. Hawthorne uses light and dark imagery, diction, details, and other elements to bring out themes in his stories. Hawthorne is very detailed, even when it comes to the smallest things, such as the Scarlet Letter that was worn by Hester. In Hawthorne’s stories there are a lot of questions left by the reader until the end of the book is reached. This is a very good strategy as it keeps the readers attentive and curious about what will happen next in the story. Corruption is shown many ways throughout the short story, “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” One way the theme of corruption is shown in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is by the other professor, Baglioni, is dishonest. Baglioni is dishonest because he told Giovanni that if he gave Beatrice this antidote it would cure her but instead it killed her. Beatrice is the only innocent one in the story because it is not her fault that she cannot interact with other people and she had to think fast when trying to stop Giovanni from touching the plant and had no idea that she was poisonous. Also, Rappachini knew that Giovanni was going to be poisoned eventually like Beatrice and instead of trying to help him he kept his distance and let Giovanni become in-able to interact with other humans. Corruption is also shown many ways throughout The Scarlet Letter. One way it is shown in The Scarlet Letter is through the character of Reverend Dimmesdale. When you think of a Reverend you would expect them to be a leader, honorable, and have good behavior. Rev. Dimmesdale is the exact opposite; he is Hester Prynne’s partner in crime. Then there is Chillingworth, he is the known as the “evil” character in the story because he tries getting revenge on Rev. throughout the entire story. Chillingworth was married to Hester Prynne in the story. In the society of The Scarlet letter women have no power; therefore they should not have the blame for anything. Responsibility is left up to the men. Hester Prynne is a strong, independent woman and goes against the thought of a woman in the puritan society. Hester is a seamstress and is by herself with her daughter Pearl. Most women in the puritan society do not like Hester because she had done the crime of adultery and since none of them know who she cheated on Chillingworth with, they have no choice but to be suspicious.

Hawthorne uses many stylistic elements within The Scarlet Letter to help the reader better understand. Many of the people in the puritan society think of Pearl as a devil child because they do not know who the father is and she is very smart and weird for her age. One of the stylistic elements Hawthorne uses to describe Pearl is light imagery. “…was admirably adapted to Pearl’s beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame the ever danced upon the Earth”, this is saying that Pearl shines bright and stands out for her size (Hawthorne, 105). This quote has a positive connotation. This is showing that she is not evil by describing her with words like”brightest” and “stands out”. In reality, the evil character in The Scarlet Letter is Chillingworth. His name itself gives away that he is an evil character because of the word ‘chilling’ within his name. Hawthorne uses many different ways to draw attention to the main idea. Here’s one example of Hawthorne using diction to help identify Chillingworth’s character traits, “All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving!”, the words “Pitiless” and “Unforgiving” are capitalized and have a negative connotation which hints that Chillingworth is evil. These are some of the ways Hawthorne uses stylistic elements to help the reader better understand. Hawthorne is an author that goes into great detail about something but still manages to “beat around the bush”. Examples of this would be in The Scarlet Letter and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”. Hawthorne uses this strategy to help slowly develop the theme of corruption by characters actions and conflicts in these stories. Details, stylistic elements, imagery, diction and other elements play a keep role in Hawthorne’s stories. All of his titles have a similar pattern of not stating something directly and leaving it up to the reader to fully grasp the information described. Corruption is shown through the character of Reverend Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter and shown through the characters of Rappachini and Baglioni.