Guilt In The Scarlet Letter

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A Consuming Guilt In life, guilt is present in everyone, whether it be from eating the last cookie, accidentally hurting your sibling, forgetting someone’s birthday, breaking your diet, cheating on a test, or lying to your parents. Even these small acts that can easily occur can cause someone to feel guilty. Guilt can be present in anyone; even Nathaniel Hawthorne used guilt as the main aspect of characters in his book The Scarlet Letter. A married woman, Hester Prynne, and an unmarried reverend, Arthur Dimmesdale, commit a sin of passion while defying their Puritan Boston society. When Hester becomes pregnant, the people in the society condemn her, make her wear a scarlet ‘A’, and throw her in the prison, where she will stay until she leaves …show more content…
After secretly committing adultery with a woman named Hester, Dimmesdale’s life in the Puritan society is put in jeopardy. His title of ‘Reverend Dimmesdale’ and his role to the people must be kept by concealing the secret of his passion. Though he couldn’t out himself to relieve some of his guilt, Dimmesdale resorts to self-punishment by whipping himself, not eating, and not sleeping. Self-punishment did not help to relieve Dimmesdale’s guilt completely; his guilt still remained in his mind. To show the how much Dimmesdale’s guilt affects him, the author says, “While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul...the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale...achieved...popularity in his sacred office...he won it...by his sorrows,” (Hawthorne 108). The extent of Dimmesdale’s guilt begins to affect him physically as well as mentally. The black trouble of his soul, or his guilt, begins to change him. Dimmesdale becomes sickly, pale, and weak, and he starts to lose weight. The Puritans are not suspicious, they only think that he is overworking himself. This change and the sin he commits causes Dimmesdale to deliver better sermons and he becomes very popular among the people. Although Dimmesdale shows the physical effects of guilt, there are other characters that show different consequences of …show more content…
The first thing learned about Pearl is that she is the result of Hester’s sin, meaning she is Hester’s illegitimate daughter. Everyone in the Puritan society expects Pearl to be a demon child because she was born from sin, and she does not have a father figure in her life to teach her the ways of the Puritan religion. Throughout the book, Pearl starts to develop as a character and her true identity is revealed; especially in the forest. When Pearl awaits the meeting of her father, Dimmesdale, in the forest, she is described by the author as being, “...all glorified with a ray of sunshine that was attracted thitherward...by a certain sympathy,” (Hawthorne 160). Sunshine is a recurring symbol that correlates with happiness. Therefore when Pearl is enveloped in the sunlight, she is bursting with happiness. This ‘ray of sunshine’ also foreshadows a happy life for Pearl in the future. Several times when Pearl and Hester are walking in the forest, sunlight will fall upon the path. While Pearl is able to ‘catch’ the sunlight, the sunlight ‘runs away’ from Hester when she tries to catch it. This also shows that Pearl has a better chance to have a happy life. Characters that exhibit differing effects of sin or guilt in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter are Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne, and Pearl Prynne. Through reading about the characters’ struggles, the reader can learn to deal with guilt in their own way. This can also show
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