Psychological and Social Consequences of Sin of Characters
Uploaded by makkehersmile on Nov 01, 2007
How can we as a society differentiate what is to be deemed morally wrong, biblically sinful, or passionately blissful? No matter what we decide for our own predicaments, it is of no place for our peers or community to make the choice for us. Everyday through radio, magazines, and television, we hear of scandals and celebrity breakups- gossip about other people’s lives, none of which pertains to our own. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne created many characters, all of which went through this very suffering, but carried out their situations in a variety of ways. The characters in the novel, Hester Prynne; the father of her illegitimate child, Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale; and Mistress Prynne’s estranged husband, Roger Chillingworth, live their Puritan lifestyle while being persecuted tremendously. One of these characters was publicly humiliated to be set an example of and as given punishment. Another spent years with a pain, self-inflicted, from having to bear the guilt and shame of committing a “sinful” act with said mistress. And the third, unknowingly, self-destructed his body inside and out with the lust of getting revenge from the first two. Why must we do these things to not only ourselves, but to our neighbors as well? Does life really get to the point where we feel the need to drag others down with us? As they say, misery does love company.
In the beginning of Hawthorne’s novel, he tells us of Hester Prynne, the protagonist of the story, and the life she has been living. Hester had been put in jail for committing adultery and was imprisoned along with her unborn child. She had been previously married to Roger Chillingworth, a man whom had yet to be seen by not only his wife, but also the entire town of Boston, in years. Because of his absence, no one could be sure if Chillingworth was dead or simply yet to return from Europe. To come from being married, to being left with out a companion as such, would be hard on the majority of people- breaking them down, leaving them yearning for even a decent adult conversation to hope for the least. Some would say that she was right in making a relationship to fill her loneliness; while others would argue in that not only her physical acts with...