A Character Analysis Of 'So Simple, It's Complex'
Sarah Patterson
Literature and Composition II
The Scarlet Letter- Character Analysis
November 5, 2012
So Simple, It’s Complex The story The Scarlet Letter is about a young woman whose husband sends her ahead of him to start their life while he finishes affairs. During the two years that they are apart she engages in an affair and she ends up having a child. Her husband returns to find her facing out in a courtyard, and then swears her to secrecy of who he is and vows that he will find out who the father is as the young woman won’t tell. We find out later that the adulterer is the town’s best preacher. So now we are faced with four characters; Hester Prynne the adulteress woman, Roger Chillingworth Hester’s husband, Arthur Dimmesdale …show more content…
It is a tangled web of sin and sinner, guilt and freedom, forgiveness and judgment. There are many different interpretations to each character. Is Hester a view of free will or an image of Divine Maternity? Is Chillingworth predestination or is he vengefulness? Is Dimmesdale a view of guilt of a view of the Puritan faith? And finally is Pearl the symbol of freedom and fate of nature or is she herself just the symbol? Ultimately that defining moment for each character remains with the reader. The analysis of each character depends on how each reader deciphers their different motivations, their actions, and their ethics. What means one thing to me could mean absolutely the opposite with someone else. There is no black and white, in this story there is only grey and maybe there are a few shades of scarlet.
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[ 1 ]. The idea of this came from a Scholarly Journal that I found entitled “Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER.” By John Reiss.
[ 2 ]. Spark notes: the Scarlet Letter: Analysis of Major Characters –as this is my first time ever doing this I found spark notes to be very helpful by way of examples.
[ 3 ]. “Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER.” By John
Literature and Composition II
The Scarlet Letter- Character Analysis
November 5, 2012
So Simple, It’s Complex The story The Scarlet Letter is about a young woman whose husband sends her ahead of him to start their life while he finishes affairs. During the two years that they are apart she engages in an affair and she ends up having a child. Her husband returns to find her facing out in a courtyard, and then swears her to secrecy of who he is and vows that he will find out who the father is as the young woman won’t tell. We find out later that the adulterer is the town’s best preacher. So now we are faced with four characters; Hester Prynne the adulteress woman, Roger Chillingworth Hester’s husband, Arthur Dimmesdale …show more content…
It is a tangled web of sin and sinner, guilt and freedom, forgiveness and judgment. There are many different interpretations to each character. Is Hester a view of free will or an image of Divine Maternity? Is Chillingworth predestination or is he vengefulness? Is Dimmesdale a view of guilt of a view of the Puritan faith? And finally is Pearl the symbol of freedom and fate of nature or is she herself just the symbol? Ultimately that defining moment for each character remains with the reader. The analysis of each character depends on how each reader deciphers their different motivations, their actions, and their ethics. What means one thing to me could mean absolutely the opposite with someone else. There is no black and white, in this story there is only grey and maybe there are a few shades of scarlet.
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[ 1 ]. The idea of this came from a Scholarly Journal that I found entitled “Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER.” By John Reiss.
[ 2 ]. Spark notes: the Scarlet Letter: Analysis of Major Characters –as this is my first time ever doing this I found spark notes to be very helpful by way of examples.
[ 3 ]. “Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER.” By John