Hester Prynne And Chillingworth's Reaction To The Scarlet Letter

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Sequoia Martell-Tash
Honors Essay

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter was set in the 1640’s at the very beginning of the Colonial Age. This novel, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, tells the story of a young woman who is shamed by her community and deemed an ‘adulterer’, which at that point in history was one of the greatest sins one could perform. This novel is filled with conflicts: personal conflicts, conflicts of strained relationships, and a greater conflict within society which analyzes social construct and the overall ideas of right and wrong. The entirety of this book is based around the dynamics between Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, throwing these characters into high pressure situations in order to genuinely show the essence of their nature. Chillingworth, Hester’s original husband, is a twisted man who thrives off of revenge, which is shown indefinitely in his crooked obsession with Dimmesdale: Hester’s co-adulterer.
Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth met in Europe, where they both originated from. When Hester and Roger met, …show more content…
Before the need for revenge took over Chillingworth’s life, he was a simple scholar, only something as overbearing as these circumstances could lead a man to personifying Satan himself. Chillingworth knew what he was doing to Dimmesdale on a very deep level. Chillingworth, at the beginning of his relationship with Dimmesdale as a doctor, always somehow assumed that his mental and physical health descent was somehow connected to Hester Prynne, but he had no proof. In a conversation that Hester and Chillingworth have about his revenge towards Dimmesdale, Hester acknowledges that Dimmesdale better off be dead than having to deal with the torment that Chillingworth was deliberately putting Dimmesdale through. Chillingworth replies

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter: Response

The Scarlet Letter: Response 3 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s initial descriptions of Hester Prynne and her ex-husband provide a detailed outlook on their contrasting characters, both physical and moral. In chapter 2, titled “The Market-Place,” Hester is given a nearly divine appearance despite her infamous reputation. In contrast, her former husband, later referred to as Roger Chillingworth, appears rather deformed and is described in a devilish manner. Hawthorne’s portrayals show the strikingly different…

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Scarlet Letter Essay

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne includes numerous characters and each individual has a worthy role. Hester Prynne stands out the most and very significant because she changes throughout the novel. At the beginning, she is known to be a sinner through the Puritans eyes. Hester has gone against them by committing adultery and since she did, she is to wear a symbol of shame for the rest of her life. She is a beautiful young woman who had sinned, but is forgiven. Hawthorne uses Hester in…

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Comparing The Black Cat And The Tell-Tale Heart

In Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are greatly transformed by their confession of sin. The narrators of Edward Allen Poe’s stories “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” have similar reactions to their crime and at the build-up to their confession. These reactions are telling of the soteriology and teleology ideals of the romantic era. Hawthorne and Poe’s characters confess after being driven to do so by the manifestation of their guilt. Hester and…

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Scarlet Letter Essay

fabricated physician, and husband of Hester Prynne, experiences exile in both helpful and hurtful fashions. His involvement with exile paints the picture for the way that Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the Puritan community as “the city upon a hill.” Throughout “The Scarlet Letter,” there are multiple instances where Chillingworth faces and ultimately suffers through separation. These occasions include when he returns home to Boston and realizes what Hester has done in Chapter Three, when Chillingworth…

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The Scarlett Letter Essay

would normally think of as being inconceivable. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's, The Scarlett Letter, characters have to live with some form of guilt. When faced with guilt, a people can either face their actions or run from them. Hawthorne reveals the evils that emerge from characters when they conceal their sins. As a result, Hawthorne shows how characters such as Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and Hester Prynn realize that guilt without confession ultimately leads to negative consequences.…

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SCARLET LETTER - Feminism Essay

Victoria Marchlewski English 10 H Period 5 The Scarlet Letter Final Test (Essay) #6 Often in literature, women are portrayed as weak or evil. Eve caused original sin, Miss Havisham, from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations , hated men because of heartbreak, and Cruella de Vil planned to murder dogs for their coats. However, in The Scarlet Letter , Nathaniel Hawthorne shows the role of a woman in a different light. Hester Prynne, the main character, makes her own decisions without causing her community to fall apart…

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Essay about The Scarlet Letter and Character Pearl

around her mother, nature, and her perception of the scarlet letter. Pearl’s significance in the novel, The Scarlet Letter, is both the consequence and the solution to the sin of adultery that her mother, Hester Prynne, and as we find out, her father, Minister Dimmesdale committed. Her significance changes completely during the novel, but her role also changed the importance of the other characters like her mother. Pearl has the same behavioral reactions that children nowadays have, meaning she is straight-forward…

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Essay about Cats: The Scarlet Letter

Scarlet Letter Puritan society: A group of them fled to Holland and subsequently to the New World, where they hoped to build a society, described by John Winthrop, as "a city upon a hill" — a place where the "eyes of all people are upon us." In such a place and as long as they followed His words and did their work to glorify His ways, God would bless them, and they would prosper. Hawthorne, of course, presents the irony of this concept when he describes the prison as a building already worn when…

Words 3941 - Pages 16