Scarlet Letter. Jumbled Thoughts.

I’ve never come across a book that frustrated me so much, yet, was so intriguing to me as The Scarlet Letter. 

This book shows in very good detail the beliefs, values, and priorities of the people living in this time period. As a group, people of this time lived solely to please their creator and to secure their places in heaven. This is the reasoning behind the shunning of Hester Prynne. Hester is a sinner. The townspeople believe that to let her live without punishment is to commit a sin themselves. Therefore, she is shunned in the village she lives in and is forced to wear a scarlet letter A (signifying she is an adulterer). Hester comes to wear this A proudly. Even when the elders are considering letting her take it off she wears it as a symbol of what she’s been through. She also makes no attempt to hide Pearl, her daughter, who is also a permanent symbol of her sin. 

Pearl is a symbol throughout the entire book. More than anything, she is there to remind the reader of the consequences of Hester’s actions. At the end, however, once her father publicly admits to being her father she becomes a person. A character, rather than a symbol.

Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl’s father and Hester’s former lover, is plagued with guilt throughout the entire story. I didn’t see it, though, as guilt for the sin he has committed. It is guilt for not taking credit for his daughter. This guilt is with him with everything he does. That is clear to the reader throughout the entire story. 

Appropriately named, Roger Chillingworth is a cold, unfeeling man. Disguising himself as a doctor, he never lets Dimmesdale get to far away because he is planning revenge for the affair Dimmesdale has engaged in with his wife. At the end of the novel Chillngworth dies. Much like a leech, with no one to feed on, he has no way to survive.