Theme Of Punishment In The Scarlet Letter
Many punishments in the Puritan society are public. The point of this is to humiliate the “criminals” and make them feel as if they need to repent. There is nothing that the magistrates enjoy more than public confessions of the guilty (in text citation). The Scarlet Letter was written in the 1850’s and was based in this type of society. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the two main characters commit a similar sin but experience a different outcome. Hester and Arthur commit a very similar and related sin. Hester Prynne commits a sin of adultery. She is a married woman whose husband is lost at sea and sleeps with another man. Prynne actually becomes pregnant and has a child named Pearl,whose name holds great significance. Arthur
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Arthur plans to flea the country with Hester and Pearl. He gives a sermon about what he's done, but the people don't realize and only love him more. He takes the scaffold to confess his sin and reveal his one “A” but he feels as if he cannot do it alone. He asks Hester and Pearl join him on the scaffold. While he stand on the scaffold, he feels so extremely guilty that he dies standing up there on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl by his side. Hester deals with her sin and punishment in an entirely different way. Hester raises Pearl and cares for her all by herself, even when people attempt to take Pearl away from her. She is able to build a small business doing embroidery. After some time Hester is able to regain respect from the townspeople. She over comes her sin and punishments. She survives. Her “A” changes in meaning from adultery to able to angel, and she wears it with pride. Hester eventually fleas the country with Pearl and returns many years later. When she comes back she is still wearing the “A” even though her punishment no longer exist. Hester dies back in Boston, and gets buried next to the person whom she truly loves, Arthur Dimmesdale. In the end of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote,“Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with amorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate…relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow: ‘On a field, sable, the letter A,
Arthur plans to flea the country with Hester and Pearl. He gives a sermon about what he's done, but the people don't realize and only love him more. He takes the scaffold to confess his sin and reveal his one “A” but he feels as if he cannot do it alone. He asks Hester and Pearl join him on the scaffold. While he stand on the scaffold, he feels so extremely guilty that he dies standing up there on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl by his side. Hester deals with her sin and punishment in an entirely different way. Hester raises Pearl and cares for her all by herself, even when people attempt to take Pearl away from her. She is able to build a small business doing embroidery. After some time Hester is able to regain respect from the townspeople. She over comes her sin and punishments. She survives. Her “A” changes in meaning from adultery to able to angel, and she wears it with pride. Hester eventually fleas the country with Pearl and returns many years later. When she comes back she is still wearing the “A” even though her punishment no longer exist. Hester dies back in Boston, and gets buried next to the person whom she truly loves, Arthur Dimmesdale. In the end of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote,“Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with amorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate…relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow: ‘On a field, sable, the letter A,