Brooding Romantic Symbolism: The Scarlet Letter and Billy Budd

In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Pryne and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale had committed the horrible sin of adultery. Hester was open about what she did. There was no way for her to deny her sin, since the product was her daughter, Pearl. The only thing that she did hide was the identity of the child's father, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester took all of the blame for a sin that they were both responsible for. Dimmesdale kept his sin hidden and this was torture to his soul. Therefore, Hester's honesty made her a symbol of strength and Dimmesdale's inability to be truthful to himself and to society made him a symbol of weakness.

When Pearl asks Hester if she has ever met the Black Man (the devil) she responds, "Once in my life I met the Black Man!

The Characters in the novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville were also very symbolic. Innocence is the most basic characteristic trait of Billy Budd himself. In Billy's case, innocence means simplicity, honesty, purity, and straightforwardness. Billy lives and acts from his heart and he isn't intellectual or self-conscious. He's incapable of sarcasm or deceit. His innocence reflects his lack of experience: Billy can't read or write and he doesn't know much about the world besides what he's seen at sea. He's so trusting that he can't imagine the presence of evil in anyone. His gullibility makes him an easy target for someone like Claggart, who sets traps for Billy in secret but pretends to like him.

This scarlet letter is his mark!" This shows that Hester was honest with herself about her sin and was willing to except whatever the consequences would be. Hester actually learned from her sin and bettered herself from it. "The scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. "

Although the stories in the Scarlet Letter and in Billy Budd were quite different, the novels did have a lot in common. They were both written by brooding romantic authors, Hawthorne and Melville. Both books emphasized the human capacity for sin, and they both also questioned the true meaning of it. In both novels the reader sympathizes for the characters that have sinned. I think that these authors might have been questioning the rules that were really just made up by society. Who is to say whether or not what Hester, Dimmesdale, or Billy Budd did was wrong? In American society today I am pretty sure that none of them would have really been punished for their "sin." Billy Budd probably would have been tried but definitely not executed, because, after all, he committed manslaughter, not murder. And as for Hester and Dimmesdale, in society today adultery is really no big deal.

Claggart sees how popular Billy is, and is envious of this. He's smart enough to understand that Billy's good looks go with a good heart; he half wishes he could be like Billy, but since he knows this is impossible, he wants to destroy him. "The master-at-arms was perhaps the only man in the ship intellectually capable of adequately appreciating the moral phenomenon presented in Billy Budd. " The presence of John Claggart in Billy Budd suggests that evil is part of our world, and it will always attach itself to innocence and try to corrupt or destroy it.

What these authors are asking is, does everyone really have evil within them? And if they do, what is the definition of evil anyway? If evil means the desire to dest

Some topics in this essay:
Roger Chillingworth, Billy Budd, Budd Billy's, Captain Vere, Pearl Hester, Hester Dimmesdale, Hester Pryne, Dimmesdale Hester, Billy Bud, Hawthorne Melville, scarlet letter, billy budd, hester dimmesdale, scarlet letter billy, letter mark, battle evil, sin billy, arthur dimmesdale, budd novels, sin adultery, scarlet letter mark, reverend arthur dimmesdale, billy budd novels, reverend arthur,