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The Scarlet Letter - Analysis
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The Scarlet Letter - Analysis
Lisa Yang Adultery, betrayal, promiscuity, deception, and conspiracy, all of which would make an excellent coming attraction on the Hollywood scene and probably a rather erotic book. Add Puritan ideals and writing styles, making it long, drawn out, sleep inducing, tedious, dim-witted, and the end result is The Scarlet Letter. Despite all these unfavorable factors it is considered a classic and was a statement of the era (Letter 1). The Scarlet Letter is pervaded with profound symbolism and revolves around the idea that hidden guilt causes more suffering than open guilt. This theme along with its symbolism is demonstrated through the lives of the three main characters - Hester Pyrnne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth throughout the story. Their personalities are shown most clearly during the scaffold scenes. These scenes are the most substantial situations in the story because they illustrate the immediate, delayed, and prolonged effects that the sin of adultery has on the main characters (Analysis1). In the first scene, everyone in the town is gathered in the market place because Hester is being questioned about the identity of the father of her child - Pearl (analysis 1). Hester experiences open guilt through being publicly punished for adultery. She is being forced to stand on it for three hours straight to be ridiculed and ostracized by the community. Dimmesdale however refuses to admit that he committed adultery and thereby ev...
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