A+ Student Essay Main Ideas Symbols Main Ideas Symbols. Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. The Scarlet Letter. The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letter’s meaning shifts as time passes The Scarlet Letter, novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in The work centers on Hester Prynne, a married woman who is shunned after bearing a child out of wedlock but displays great compassion and resiliency. The novel is considered a masterpiece of American literature and a A+ Student Essay Characters Pearl In general, children in The Scarlet Letter are portrayed as more perceptive and more honest than adults, and Pearl is the most perceptive of them all. Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mother’s scarlet letter and of the society that produced it. From an early age, she fixates on the emblem
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Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most prolific symbolists in American literature, and a study of his symbols is necessary to understanding his novels. Generally speaking, a symbol is something used to stand for something else. In literature, a symbol is most often a concrete object used to represent an idea more abstract and broader in scope and meaning — often a moral, religious, or philosophical concept or value.
Symbols can range from the most obvious substitution of one thing for another, to creations as massive, complex, and perplexing as Melville's white whale in Moby Dick. An allegory in literature is a story where characters, scarlet letter essay, objects, and events have a hidden meaning and are used to present some universal lesson.
Hawthorne has a perfect atmosphere for the symbols in The Scarlet Letter because the Puritans saw the world through allegory. For scarlet letter essay, simple patterns, like the meteor streaking through the sky, became religious or moral interpretations for human events. Objects, such as the scaffold, were ritualistic symbols for such concepts as sin and penitence. Whereas the Scarlet letter essay translated such rituals into moral and repressive exercises, Hawthorne turns their interpretations around in The Scarlet Letter.
The Puritan community sees Hester as a fallen woman, Dimmesdale as a saint, and would have seen the disguised Chillingworth as scarlet letter essay victim — a husband betrayed.
Instead, Hawthorne ultimately presents Hester as a woman who represents a sensitive human being with a heart and emotions; Dimmesdale as a minister who is not very saint-like in private but, instead, morally weak and unable to confess his hidden sin; and Chillingworth as a husband who is the worst possible offender of humanity and single-mindedly pursuing an evil goal.
Hawthorne's embodiment of these characters is denied by the Puritan mentality: At the end of the novel, even watching and hearing Dimmesdale's confession, many members of the Puritan community still deny what they saw. Thus, using his scarlet letter essay as symbols, Hawthorne discloses the grim underside of Puritanism that lurks scarlet letter essay the public piety.
Some of Hawthorne's symbols change their meaning, depending on the context, and some are static. Examples of static symbols are the Reverend Mr. Wilson, who represents the Church, or Governor Bellingham, who represents the State. But many of Hawthorne's symbols change — particularly his characters — depending on their treatment by the community and their reactions to their sins. His characters, the scarlet A, light and darkness, color imagery, and the settings of forest and village serve symbolic purposes.
Hester is the public sinner who demonstrates the effect of punishment on sensitivity scarlet letter essay human nature. She is seen as a fallen woman, a culprit who deserves the ignominy of her immoral choice. She struggles with her recognition of the letter's symbolism just as people struggle with their moral choices. The paradox is that the Puritans stigmatize her with the mark of sin and, in so doing, reduce her to a dull, lifeless woman whose characteristic color is gray and whose vitality and femininity are suppressed, scarlet letter essay.
Over the seven years of her punishment, Hester's inner struggle changes from a victim of Puritan branding to a decisive woman in tune with human nature. When she meets Dimmesdale in the forest in Chapter 18, scarlet letter essay, Hawthorne says, "The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to scarlet letter essay her free.
The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. In time, even the Puritan community sees the scarlet letter essay as meaning "Able" or "Angel. In her final years, "the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence, too.
Often human beings who suffer great loss and life-changing experiences become survivors with an increased understanding and sympathy for the human losses of others. Hester is such a symbol. Dimmesdale, scarlet letter essay, on the other hand, is the secret sinner whose public and private faces are opposites.
Even as the beadle — an obvious symbol of the righteous Colony of Massachusetts — proclaims that the settlement is a place where "iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine," the colony, along with the Reverend Mr. Wilson, scarlet letter essay, is in awe of Dimmesdale's goodness and sanctity, scarlet letter essay. Inside the good minister, however, is a storm raging between holiness and self-torture.
He is unable to reveal his sin. At worst, Dimmesdale is a symbol of hypocrisy and self-centered intellectualism; he knows what is right but has not the scarlet letter essay to make himself do the public act. When Hester tells him that the ship for Europe leaves in four days, he is delighted with the timing.
He will be able to give his Election Sermon and "fulfill his public duties" before escaping. At best, his public piety is a disdainful act when he worries that his congregation will see his features in Pearl's face.
Dimmesdale's inner struggle is intense, and he struggles to do the right thing. He realizes the scaffold is the place to confess and also his shelter from his tormenter, Chillingworth. Yet, the very thing that makes Dimmesdale a symbol of the secret sinner is also what redeems him. Sin scarlet letter essay its acknowledgment humanize Dimmesdale. When he leaves the forest and realizes the extent of the devil's grip on his soul, he passionately writes his sermon and makes his decision to confess.
As a symbol, he represents the secret sinner who fights the good fight in his soul and eventually wins. Pearl is the strongest of these allegorical images because she is nearly all symbol, little reality.
Dimmesdale sees Pearl as the "freedom of a broken law"; Hester sees her as "the living hieroglyphic" of their sin; and the community sees her as the scarlet letter essay of the devil's work.
She is the scarlet letter in the flesh, scarlet letter essay, a reminder of Hester's sin. As Hester tells the pious community leaders in Chapter 8, ". she is my happiness! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold scarlet letter essay power of retribution for my sin? Pearl is also the imagination of the artist, an idea so powerful that the Puritans could not even conceive of it, let alone understand it, except in terms of transgression.
She is natural law unleashed, scarlet letter essay, the freedom of the unrestrained wilderness, the result of repressed passion. When Hester meets Dimmesdale in the forest, Pearl scarlet letter essay reluctant to come across the brook to see them because they represent the Puritan society in which she has no happy role. Here in the forest, she is free and in harmony with nature.
Her image in the brook is a common symbol of Hawthorne's. He often uses a mirror to symbolize the imagination of the artist; Pearl is a product of that imagination. When Dimmesdale confesses his sin in the light of the sun, Pearl is free to become a human being. All along, Hester felt there was this redeemable nature in her daughter, and here she sees her faith rewarded, scarlet letter essay. Pearl can now feel human grief and sorrow, as Hester can, and she becomes a sin redeemed.
Chillingworth is consistently a symbol of cold reason and intellect unencumbered by human compassion. While Dimmesdale has intellect but lacks will, scarlet letter essay, Chillingworth has both. He is fiendish, evil, and intent on revenge. In his first appearance in the novel, he is compared to a snake, an obvious allusion to the Garden of Eden. Chillingworth becomes the essence of evil when he sees the scarlet letter on Dimmesdale's breast in Chapter 10, where there is "no need to ask how Satan comports himself when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom.
Eventually, his evil is so pervasive that Chillingworth awakens the distrust of the Puritan community and the recognition of Pearl. As time goes by and Dimmesdale becomes more frail under the constant torture of Chillingworth, the community worries that their minister is losing a battle with the devil himself.
Even Pearl recognizes that Chillingworth is a creature of the Black Man and warns her mother to stay away from him. Chillingworth loses his reason to live when Dimmesdale eludes him at the scaffold in the final scenes of the novel. Besides the characters, the most obvious symbol is the scarlet letter itself, which has various meanings depending on its context.
It is a sign of adultery, penance, and penitence. It brings about Hester's suffering and loneliness and also provides her rejuvenation.
In the book, it first appears as an actual material object in The Custom House preface. Then it becomes an elaborately gold-embroidered A over Hester's heart scarlet letter essay is magnified in the armor breast-plate at Governor Bellingham's mansion. Here Hester is hidden by the gigantic, magnified symbol just as her life and feelings are hidden behind the sign of her sin, scarlet letter essay.
Still later, the letter is an immense red A in the sky, a green A of eel-grass arranged by Pearl, the A on Hester's dress decorated by Pearl with prickly burrs, an A on Dimmesdale's chest seen by some spectators at the Election Day procession, and, finally, represented by the epitaph "On a field, sable, the letter A, gules" gules being the heraldic term for "red" on the tombstone Hester and Dimmesdale share. In all these examples, the meaning of the symbol depends on the context and sometimes the interpreter.
For example, in the second scaffold scene, scarlet letter essay, the community sees the scarlet A in the sky as a scarlet letter essay that the dying Governor Winthrop has become an angel; Dimmesdale, however, sees it scarlet letter essay a sign of his own secret sin. The community initially sees the letter on Hester's bosom as a mark of just punishment and a symbol to deter others from sin.
Hester is a Fallen Woman with a symbol of her guilt. Later, when she becomes a frequent visitor in homes scarlet letter essay pain and sorrow, the A is seen to represent "Able" or "Angel. Light and darkness, sunshine and shadows, noon and midnight, scarlet letter essay, are all manifestations of the same images.
Likewise, colors — such as red, gray, and black — play a role in the symbolic nature of the background and scenery. But, scarlet letter essay, similar to the characters, the context determines what role the light or colors play.
The Scarlet Letter 's first chapter ends with an admonition to "relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow" with "some sweet moral blossom. In Chapter 16, Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the forest with a "gray expanse of cloud" and a narrow path hemmed in by the black and dense forest. The feelings of the lovers, weighed down by guilt, are reflected in the darkness of nature, scarlet letter essay.
Every so often, sunshine flickers on the setting. But Pearl reminds her mother that the sun will not shine on scarlet letter essay sinful Hester; it does shine, however, when Hester passionately lets down her hair. The sun is the symbol of untroubled, guilt-free happiness, or perhaps the approval of God and nature. It also seems to be, scarlet letter essay, at times, the light of truth and grace.
Darkness is always associated with Chillingworth. It is also part of the description of the jail in Chapter 1, the scene scarlet letter essay sin and punishment. The Puritans in that scene wear gray scarlet letter essay, and the darkness of the jail is relieved by the sunshine of the outside. When Hester comes into the sunshine from the darkness, she must squint at the light of day, and her iniquity is placed for all to see.
Noon is the time of Dimmesdale's confession, and daylight is the symbol of exposure. Nighttime, however, is the scarlet letter essay of concealment, and Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold at midnight, concealing his confession from the community.
In the end, even the grave of Dimmesdale and Hester is in darkness. Colors play a similar role to light and darkness. One of the predominant colors is red, seen in the roses, the letter, Pearl's clothing, the "scarlet woman," Chillingworth's eyes, and the streak of the meteor.
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