Adversity In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

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“Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% is how I react to it”. Everyone must undergo a positive or negative suffering when faced with difficult circumstances. A person can’t control what happens to them; however, it depends on how a person responds to it. Maybe it’s a surprise, like knowing something new about a person. Sometimes it’s negative, like finding out your best friend lying to you. It all depends on how one perceives a situation. One’s reaction to an event may affect his or her life. Hester would not be the person she is at the end of the story without the many circumstances that came her way. In addition, Chillingworth turned into an atrocious monster because of the misfortune that happened to him when he arrived in Massachusetts. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter illustrates how Chillingworth and Hester choose to respond to adversity through character development, symbolism, and setting. The setting has a repercussion on a character's’ views. Puritanical views shape how Hester had to cope with sin she committed. It is bad enough Hester committed a sin but she had to “fully revealed before the crowd” (Hawthorne 47). In the puritan colony “here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence” (Hawthorne 246). The puritan colony was her home. It was the only …show more content…
Hester turns from someone who is a stigma in society to someone who people look to in veneration. Chillingworth however starts out as a man with a kind heart to a man with no heart at all. He had turned himself to a monster. Through setting, character development, and symbolism, The Scarlet Letter displays how characters respond to misfortune. Life is full of unexpected predicaments. One will go through a hardship at least once in their life but it is how they react to it that will determine how an event will shape his or her
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and own her own body” This quote is by Margaret Sanger. In the book Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne it follows various people during 17th century Massachusetts who live in a Puritan society. The main characters are Pearl, Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. Hester is arguable the most important character because all of the problems come from her sin of adultery. Hester Prynne does not let adversity get in her way and rises above it. Her courageous acts make her a prime…

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