FREE ESSAY ON SCARLET LETTER (DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES)

SCARLET LETTER (DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES)

Scarlet Letter: How does Hawthrone Show Suffering In The Scarlet Letter?
Foul whisp'rings are abroad. Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds.
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the
physician. (Shakespeare - Macbeth) Okay, I know this is Shakespeare, but it sums up the
suffering of The Scarlet Letter well. Doesn't it? 
Hester suffers society's judgement for her adultery, the letter A (a constant reminder of
her infidelity). Hester is burdened by her solitude. For though she realizes her folly,
she is unable to accept that she alone has sinned. 
...if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a
bosom besides Hester Prynne's? 
Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own
frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester Prynne yet struggled to believe that no
fellow-mortal was guilty like herself. 
...in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. 
* Dimmesdale suffers by the inconsistancy and unassurance of his mind. As his guilt
consumes him, his body withers (along with the help of the leech). 
Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged
with the peculiarities of these. 
Mr. Dimmesdale (was) conscious that the poison from one morbid spot was infecting his
heart's entire substance. 
In Dimmesdale's case he was tortured by his lies. 
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the
multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. 
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the constrast between what I seem
and what I am! And Satan laughs at it! 
Shakespeare break: 
For when my outward action doth demonstrate 
The native act and figure of my heart 
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after 
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve 
For daws to peck at. I am not what I am. 
Othello 
* Chillingworth suffers from his obsession. Like Dimmesdale, he dies because of his moral
illness. Hawthorne allows us to see his gradual demise. 
Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after
Mr. Dimmesdale's death, in the appearance and demeanor of the old man known as Roger
Chillingworth. All his strength and energy--all his vital and intellectual force--seemed
at one to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and
almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun.
This unahppy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and
systematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest triumph and consummation,
that evil principle was left with no further material to support it, when, in short,
there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the
unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his Master would find him tasks enough, and
pay him his wages duly.