Morally Ambiguous Character Analysis

Morally Ambiguous Characters
What does it mean to be morally ambiguous? The characters created by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Francis Bret Harte are divided between being purely good or purely evil. The environments that the characters live in are judgmental and hypocritical. While being isolated from society, they also deal with struggling to disassociate themselves from their pasts. The Scarlet Letter and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” characters Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and John Oakhurst illustrate the theme of moral ambiguity through their struggles and actions.
Hester Prynne endured many things throughout her life. She was forced to be married to Roger Chillingworth, a man she did not love. Prynne was sent across the ocean without him to establish a home in the new world. She fell in love with Arthur Dimmesdale, a young, smart, and handsome Reverend. Hester Prynne soon became known as an adulteress because of her pregnancy with the absence of her husband, Roger—who she assumed was lost at sea—and was sent to jail.
Prynne and her newborn daughter, Pearl, were shunned by the Puritan society seceding her release from jail. Their home was
On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage… It stood on the shore, looking across a
The idol considers himself a coward and an ignominy because of his sins. Loring writes, “And while Arthur Dimmesdale, cherished in the arms of that society which he had outraged, glossing his life with a brief coloring which made it beautiful because to all beholders, was dying of an inward anguish.” The pressure to be perfect killed Dimmesdale because not only did he lie to himself, he lied to the Puritan community that worshipped him. He devoted his life to the church and his ministry to conceal the secret that was deteriorating