The Scarlett Letter Essay Research Paper Scarlet — страница 2

elaborate color and embroidery of the scarlet letter A . (3)Pearl is a double character, she was good and bad. She is also treated as being ugly, evil, and shamed.(5)The child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a being, whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder. Pearl was bad tempered, wild, desperate, and defiant. On the other hand she was beautiful, naturalistic, and creative. As the story progresses Pearl becomes attached to the letter, it is the first letter she learns. Thus the connection between the letter and Pearl is intensified.(3 Baym) Dimmesdale was Hester s partner in sin, but he was affected by it in a different way. He was unable to think of their sin as good,

unlike Hester. Hawthorne portrays Dimmesdale as a rich psychological texture that makes him more interesting. Dimmesdale is not a person who can easily hold view contrary to society s, even when society s view leads to self-condemnation. He never denies that he is guilty and deserves to be punished, but to confess and receive punishment for his sins would be to lose his position in society, which he cannot live without.(3 Baym) The minister well knew-subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!-the light in which his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken truth, and

transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self.(3) Chillingworth is Hester s husband who is determined to get revenge on the adulterer.(4) His aim throughout the novel is to encourage Dimmesdale to continue lying about his affair, knowing that it will give him his revenge by destroying Dimmesdale s soul and body. We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man s revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so. (1)He represented evil and rejoiced in it. Over the time

period, throughout the novel, he begins to develop devilish characteristics. (4) Old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of a man s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil s office. This unhappy person had affected such a transformation by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated over.(3) Each of these characters; Hester, Pearl, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth, all play a vital role in the outcome of the story. On the plane of psychology, Hester, Chillingworth,and Dimmesdale hardly lead separate lives at all: feeding off each other s mutually

reinforcing weakness and guilt, at times merging telepathically with each other s thoughts, they seem less like three individual cases than a single, symbioticorganism.(6Bloom) Each of these characters have to make many decisions that will effect their life. Will Dimmesdale purify his conscience by public confession, or will he fail to do so and be destroyed by his own guilt? Then the question of Dimmesdale s and Hester s escape to try life over again. (2 Miziner) In order to experience the power of Hawthorne s novel, the reader must subdue his habitual impulse to look for the interest of the novel in the development of the plot.(2)