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The Scarlet Letter


            The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, is a book that was set at a time where the strict Puritan way of life was key. Hawthorne wrote about an intimate romance between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. The various relationships and feelings behind these relationships are intense, one can never really be quite sure of the true emotion. The moral of the story is to be true, yet each character is a hypocrite in some form. .
             Hester Prynne came to Boston when she married to wait for her husband while he was still in Europe, finishing business. After two years of waiting, Hester commited adultery, which was shunned in Puritan communities. While on the scaffold taking responsibility for her actions, Arthur Dimmesdale was at the peak of his hypocrisy throughout the story, telling her that "What can thy silence do for him, except tempt him .who perchance hath not the courage to grasp it for himself?-#. Staring out at the crowd from the scaffold, Hester recognizes a man, Roger Chillingworth, who is her husband who just arrived from Europe. At this point, Hester is the only person who is aware of it. Roger comes to Hester asking that she keep their marriage a secret, which she agrees to do. Chillingworth moves in with Dimmesdale to help keep him well, but his real intentions are revealed only to the reader. The underlying aspects of the characters in the book and their "twist of fate- will expose themselves in the novel. .
             During the seven year span of the book, Chillingworth's kind fazade slowly becomes an evil obsession, the obsession being destroying his "closest friend,"" for Chillingworth suspects that Dimmesdale is the father of Pearl. Chillingworth becomes a type of parasite, and one night Chillingworth finds Dimmesdale and touches his heart, feeling the burden on his heart, the scarlet letter. From that point in the story on, Chillingworth becomes obsessed with ruining Dimmesdale's life, slowly breaking him down emotionally.


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