... use of symbolism in the novel is very significant. Many symbols are underlying and hard to find, but symbols such as the letter "A" could not be more obvious. "The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! Those had been her teachers -- stern ... and wild ones -- and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss." The scarlet letter "A" is Hester Prynne's American Express card, she cannot leave home without it. With the exception of one occasion, Hester is true to her badge. ... breastplate in Governor Bellingham's g...

• Word Count: 661
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... Prynne's strength and determination provide the perfect attributes to conquer her sins and the sins of others. The "A" that Hester Prynne bears in The Scarlet Letter shifts in meaning at least two times to mirror the character changes of Hester throughout the progression of the novel and the town's acceptance of ... pride broken. She first appears to the host with her head held high and a brilliantly embroidered scarlet letter "A" upon her chest. With the use of her needle working skills, Hester presents the highly ornamental scarlet letter on her chest proving she will stand tall though...

• Word Count: 842
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... throughout the story, such as Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale experienced isolation, the consequence of sin. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the theme with the greatest amount of emotional meaning and importance is isolation. Hester Prynne, the scarlet letter bearer who committed adultery, is the protagonist that experiences isolation the most throughout the novel. As the consequence of her sin, ... her own family. At times, she is distant from Pearl emotionally because Hester is unable to tell her daughter the real meaning of the scarlet letter. Hester tells her that " I met ...

• Word Count: 979
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... . Roger Chillingworth is clearly the most obviously revengeful character. However, Aurther Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne are more significantly involved in the extraction of their revenge. Hawthorne's ultimate theme in The Scarlet Letter is vengeance amongst all of mankind. Since the moment Roger Chillingworth was introduced into the novel, revenge filled his mind. He first began gaining information from a stranger in the crowd ... embarrassment, but a mark of beauty that stood out for everyone to see. "It was whispered, by those who peered after her, that the scarlet letter threw a lurid...

• Word Count: 1589
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... religion, because this was the most forced element of Puritan fellowship. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Puritan New England, Hester Prynne was the main offender. The Scarlet Letter is an isolated drama of one woman's shame and guilt for her solitary sin. She is ridiculed and cast off from her community and the ... with wonder. His tone at the description of the crowd is sorrowful, irked. Although significant, tone is not Hawthorne's only weapon of choice. The Scarlet Letter was a novel filled with antagonism. Main conflicts include man versus man, man versus self, and man versus society. The ...

• Word Count: 1115
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... . Roger Chillingworth is clearly the most obviously revengeful character. However, Aurther Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne are more significantly involved in the extraction of their revenge. Hawthorne's ultimate theme in The Scarlet Letter is vengeance amongst all of mankind. Since the moment Roger Chillingworth was introduced into the novel, revenge filled his mind. He first began gaining information from a stranger in the crowd ... embarrassment, but a mark of beauty that stood out for everyone to see. "It was whispered, by those who peered after her, that the scarlet letter threw a lurid...

• Word Count: 1480
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Often in society people are criticized, punished and despised for their individual choices and flaws. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author attempts to show the way society casts out individuals simply because their ideas and deeds differ from ... with this punishment and chose to pass their negativity on to their offspring. "Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast as the figure, the body, the reality of sin" (83). The mothers of the children in the community would point her ... young to comprehend w...

• Word Count: 1521
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... food and clothing. By the end of the novel the "a" changed meanings from adultery to able. The shame attached to her scarlet letter is long gone. Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable, but not necessarily extraordinary woman. It is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her ... his confession was a symbolic act, while others believe Dimmesdale's fate was an example of divine judgment. The Scarlet Letter defines the relationship between the individual and society through Hester's alienation from Puritan Boston caused by the sin she com...

• Word Count: 968
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... in life. People who can look at a situation and decide the best course of action based upon the given information are good decision makers. In the "Scarlet Letter", there are many characters that do not make good decisions and have to live with the consequences. The choices that we make determine what we become, as ... a person, and how our lives are conducted. In the novel "The Scarlet letter" Hester makes the decision to commit adultery and she is now thought of, by the entire community, as an adulterer, which she is. She could have ... if someone feels guilty about something it will...

• Word Count: 546
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... Nathaniel Hawthorne The extract from "The Scarlet Letter" gives a good view of what life in Salem was like and the way people act towards people's personal issues. The language used in the extract keeps the reader in captured ... . The treatment of sinners in this period of time was very poor. For example, Hester had committed adultery, and not just being punished by the law, she had to wear "a scarlet letter" to make sure the whole community knew her offence. People did not take kindly to offences like this. People felt that her sentence was too lenient. They punish her by ... . The to...

• Word Count: 755
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... moral values among friends to those of the ones you love. Nathaniel Hawthorne presented to readers how valuable telling and concealing truths may be by his compelling novel, The Scarlet Letter. His fictional characters parallel to roles of those enduring heart-pounding punishments for denying truths of those that the everyday person can encounter. Almost always, people find love in ... forbidden places. The Scarlet letter places essential characters in representation of certain things that would be considered forbidden relationships. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale create and portra...

• Word Count: 1026
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... easily be used as a prime study for psychoanalysis. Freud's ideas and assumptions can be perfectly linked in a psychoanalysis of The Scarlet Letter. In fact, Freud himself has studied Hawthorne's characters in order to develop his postulations about the unconscious. His ideas about the ... id, the ego, and the superego are extremely significant when taking a look at characters in The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne displays the unending war between social expediency and moral righteousness in the mind of the main character, Hester. Regardless of Hester's conscious morality ... holiness, and h...

• Word Count: 1596
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... love, for truth, for honor, or for justice." One work of literature that I feel truly does illuminate several of these great quests is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This work is based in a small, Puritan community where a woman named Hester Prynne dwells. This woman has committed the sin ... of adultery and is forced to wear a scarlet A upon her bosom to constantly remind her and the rest of the community of her terrible sin. The fruit of this sin however was her little ... their honor within the community. After Dimmesdale's death, he was thought of as a strong and honorab...

• Word Count: 566
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... easily be used as a prime study for psychoanalysis. Freud's ideas and assumptions can be perfectly linked in a psychoanalysis of The Scarlet Letter. In fact, Freud himself has studied Hawthorne's characters in order to develop his postulations about the unconscious. His ideas about the ... id, the ego, and the superego are extremely significant when taking a look at characters in The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne displays the unending war between social expediency and moral righteousness in the mind of the main character, Hester. Regardless of Hester's conscious morality ... holiness, and h...

• Word Count: 1599
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Stephanie Jensen "Sin and Its Engulfing Role in the Community" ~An Analytical Essay~ In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses significant themes and Puritan ideals, such as the concept of sin. In the first chapter, Hawthorne indicates that the colony set land ... glad it was not he or she. This closed-mindedness helped feed the hatred for Hester and the societies" need to identify her by describing her with the letter A. Hester is also a heroic figure because she accepts her sin. She is open about it, and she doesn't struggle for that fact that she is human ... and is susceptible...

• Word Count: 1128
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... would have happened if Chillingworth had really died? The character Roger Chillingworth (Prynne) had a great impact on the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, Reverend Dimmesdale, and the community as a whole, would have changed drastically he Chillingworth really died. This short ... pregnant; she is brought before the community. The community officials decided that she should be banished from the community. They also branded her with the letter, "A" which stood for adulteress this way all in the Puritan society would know the sinful act that she has committed. There was a unique c...

• Word Count: 677
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... her to commit adultery; she did so out of her own weakness. However, there were instances when the Boston community simply alienated Hester out of hatred and fear of the scarlet letter that she was forced to wear. Actions taken to remove Pearl from Hester's care are an ideal example of society overstepping the boundaries of regular punishment simply to expel any ... individual and society. Hester has become such an outcast that it has become impossible for her to regain any status in the community. Once she has been branded with the scarlet A, she, in effect, is branded for life. While ...

• Word Count: 568
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter the failure to be true always leads to a painful consequence. Hester, Dimmsdale, and Chillingworth all withhold truth from someone else, and in doing so they all manage to cause someone ... ...

• Word Count: 465
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... he discovered one of his forefathers was judge, Hathorne, who presided over the Salem witchcraft trials in 1962. Puritan society had significant influence on Hawthorne's writing, especially in The Scarlet Letter: "Puritan society claimed to have based itself on the highest principal of moral idealism and filled with christian virtues of love and compassion"(Harold 123). However in his writings, Hawthorne ... presents Puritan society as hypocritical. Hawthorne describes the inhumanity and intolerance that the Puritan society had set in date, especially for sinners. In The Scarlet Letter, ...

• Word Count: 1502
• Approx Pages: 6

... to it" it nourishes or starves him, or poisons him; it gives him the substance of his life." Community plays a large role in everyone's life; Pearl and Hester of The Scarlet Letter, LeAlan Jones, Lloyd Newman, Eric Morse and his killers, of Ghetto Life 101 and Remorse, and the rest of the world. The four aspects of community are neighborhood, peers or ... the citizens frowned upon many things. Public displays of a person's crime were common. Some may think that the simple task of wearing a scarlet letter is no big deal, but try to raise a child who questions almost everything while wear...

• Word Count: 4111
• Approx Pages: 16
• Grade Level: High School

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a novel which portrays the message of sin and punishment, through the outcome of an adulterous relationship between Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne ... he becomes further entrenched in his guilt. His reaction, however, is not to palliate his suffering by confessing, rather, he further engrosses himself in self-mutilation by creating his own "scarlet A" on his chest, the conduit through which he attempts to atone for his sin. After dealing with increasing frustration, Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold in the mi...

• Word Count: 1174
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Crime and Punishment During the Puritan Era 1.) The action of The Scarlet Letter takes place in 1645. Investigate the puritan age to discover how the Puritans viewed the world. Puritans thought the world was nothing but a place where God has sent you to ... ...

• Word Count: 643
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School