Concept of sin, punishment and redemption in The Scarlet Letter free essay sample

The Scarlet Letter is a book about sin, punishment, and the hope of redemption. The book is about the life in colonial Boston of Hester Prynne, Her husband Roger Chillingworth, and Hester’s lover Arthur Dimmesdale. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a very complex and can be interpreted in many ways. Throughout the novel the Concept of sin, punishment, and redemption was portrayed through Hester Prynne, Aurthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth on many ways and on many levels. An element of this theme is sin. The whole bases of the novel are on the sin of Hester and Dimmesdale committed. The sin of adultery had great consequences and haunted both of them until the day they died. In the time this novel was written adultery should have been condemned with murder, but some of the town’s people took pity on Hester because no one knew what happened to her husband. Although the women of the town did not agree with the decision. In this novel, Chillingworth is considered as worst sinner. In the case of The Scarlet Letter the wrong, or sin, is adultery: a very serious breach of Christian morality. A young woman, Hester Prynne, has been found guilty of adultery and must wear a scarlet letter â€Å"A† on her dress as a sign of shame. Furthermore, she must stand on the scaffold for three hours, exposed to public humiliation. Hesters punishment is purely social. She has to stand on the platform of the pillory, with the people gazing curiously at the scarlet letter on her breast. Society has decreed that she shall wear throughout her life a scarlet letter on the boson of her gown. This is the stigma that Hester has to carry always. She becomes a social outcast. Children follow her and shout at her. Strangers gaze at the scarlet on her bosom and make no secret of their contempt for her. She is cruelly treated by society. Her numerous acts of service as a Sister of Mercy do soften the world to some extent, but do not secure her its pardon. Society continues to be firm and harsh. Any other woman in place of Hester would have been won over to the side of the Devil or the Black Man. But the inherent goodness of Hester and her maternal solicitude for Pearl keep her away from any further evil. Crime and penalty are dealt here both on personal and social level. The act of adultery is a crime against the individual, that individual being the wrong husband or wife. But adultery is also a crime against society. Hester Prynne has by her adulterous action, wronged her husband Chillingworth and that is what she tells him in so many words. The wrong that she has done to her husband is a crime to a personal level. But as a member so society she is also a sinner. Hester herself does not consider her adulterous action to be a serious crime or sin. For the reason, she does not experience any deep sense of guilt even after society has pronounced his judgment upon her. Hester believes in the sanctity of love relationship between her and Dimmesdale. The scarlet letter ‘A is the stigma that Hester has to carry always for her misdeed. Children follow her and shout at her. She is cruelly treated by the society. But the inherent goodness of Hester and her maternal solitude to Pearl keep her from further evil. Her crime is the serious one and her punishment is great. But it must be pointed out that the punishment comes from the society and is unaccompanied by any pangs of the society. Hester believes in the sanctity of the love relationship between her and Dimmesdale. What we did, she says to Dimmesdale in the forest, Had a consecration of its own. We felt it so; we said so; we said so to each other. Dimmesdale produces an impression of weakness and timidity. He aggravates his sin of adultery by his prolonged concealment of it and he further aggravates it by trying to keep up an appearance of piety. As the novel is primarily a story of fall of a great priest, we can easily defy Dimmesdale as the tragic hero. His life is also one long misery. He succumbs to temptation once again when in the course of his forest interview with Hester; he agrees to flee from Boston with her, though he could not stick to it. This action also leads him to collapse and makes him a tragic hero. His weakness magnifies rather than lessens the power of story. His fight is internal. His confession to the public is in of the noblest climaxes in stories to tragedy. Dimmesdales castigation comes purely from within. Society does not punish him because it does not know that he is a greater sinner of adultery and also of hypocrisy. He is all the time haunted by the sense of guilt. The fact of concealment serves only to intensify his misery. He undergoes various kinds of penance including vigils, fasts and flagellation. Society does not play the least part in the mental torture, though the role played by Chillingworth cannot be ignored. However, the crime that Dimmesdale done is severe and the more bitter crime is his being hypocrite. But he receives his punishment and through it Hawthorne shows us his noble characteristics. In the forest interview with Dimmesdale, he suggests that they escape from Boston so that they can lead a new life, but she does not do so because, as has been said above, she does not consider her relationship with Dimmesdale to be immoral or sinful. But, as he tells Hester in the forest, it is all reparation and no penitence. One night he even mounts the scaffold as an act of expiation. But, as the author remarks, it is a mockery of penance and not true amend. Soon after this forest interview, he hardens himself and determines to make a public confession of his sin. He carries out his resolves to unburden his heart, and in a few minutes, meets his end on the scaffold. This incident is the climax of his spiritual development. He confesses his guilt and gives away his life, but he has established his right to a place in heaven by virtue of his act of genuine repentance and confession. As Hawthorne points out, a man like Dimmesdale should not commit a crime like adultery. Crime is for the hardened individual who is strong enough to crush the voice of his conscience. Society does not play the least part in the mental torture which Dimmesdale undergoes, though the role played by Roger Chillingworth in this connection can not be ignored. Chillingworth persecutes Dimmesdale and does so in a subtle manner. He greatly aggravates the suffering of the poor minister. Because Reverend Dimmesdales health has begun to fail, the townspeople are happy to have Chillingworth, a newly arrived physician, take up lodgings with their beloved minister. Being in such close contact with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth begins to suspect that the ministers illness is the result of some unconfessed guilt. He applies psychological pressure to the minister because he suspects Dimmesdale to be Pearls father. One evening, pulling the sleeping Dimmesdales vestment aside, Chillingworth sees something startling on the sleeping ministers pale chest: a scarlet â€Å"A†. Chillingworths misshapen body reflects the evil in his soul, which builds as the novel progresses, similar to the way Dimmesdales illness reveals his inner turmoil. The outward man reflects the condition of the heart. Chillingworth the wronged husband turns into a fiend when he dedicates his life to a hideous event. Hester goes through the punishment but she does not need the purification because she does not commit any crime. Love cannot be called a crime, though society tortured her. Dimmesdale is the real sinner and we see him going through his mental purification for seven years. He understands his sin and he confesses his crime before his death. We can call Chillingworth a great sinner here because he is not a good husband and he also chooses a way to torture Dimmesdale which is also a kind of hypocrisy from social point of view. On Election Day, Dimmesdale gives what is declared to be one of his most inspired sermons. But as the procession leaves the church, Dimmesdale stumbles and almost falls. Seeing Hester and Pearl in the crowd watching the parade, he climbs upon the scaffold and confesses his sin, dying in Hesters arms. Later, witnesses swear that they saw a stigmata in the form of a scarlet ‘A’ upon his chest. According to the legal statutes at the time and the prevailing sentiment of keeping in accordance with a strict interpretation of the Bible, adultery was a capital sin that required the execution of both adulterer and adulteressor at the very least, severe public corporal punishment. In Christian Belief, people who die with secret sin, they are more sinners. Hester Prynne, Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth both commit sin. Hester and Dimmesdale confess to the people and get redemption but Chillingworth does not confess to the people and for this reason he does not get redemption. Chillingworth is died as a sinner but Dimmesdale and Hester freed from sin. For this reason, we can consider Chillingworth as a worst sinner. Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their disobedience, that which separates them from the divine and from other creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil and to procreate – two labors that seem to define the human condition. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge – specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as her passport into regions where other women dared not tread leading her to speculate about her society and herself more boldly than anyone else in New England. As for Dimmesdale, the cheating minister of his sin gives him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his chest vibrates in unison with theirs. In the end, Hawthorne has mainly dealt with the idea of ‘Sin, Punishment, and Redemption and he believed in sin and pre-destination like a true puritan. He inherited his Puritanism from his ancestors.