FREE ESSAY ON RESPONSE TO THE SCARLET LETTER

RESPONSE TO THE SCARLET LETTER

Response to The Scarlet Letter
Confess thy truth and thou shall have eternal rest. I belive that is the moral to be
taught in this novel of inspirational love, yet a novel of much sorrow. The impossible
became possible in The Scarlet Letter, a story set back in the Puritan Times. In this
response, I will give my reactions in writing to different aspects of the novel;the
characchters, my likes and dislikes, my questions, and my opinion of the harsh Puritain
lifestyle.
Hester Prynne, the Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth each suffered guilt in
their own way in the novel The Scarlet Letter. In the beginning of the novel, Hester
Prynne should have not suffered the way she did on the scaffold alone. She was forced to
be intergated by the high-officials of the town, while holding her little Pearl in arms.
Making matters worse, the father of the child was in that very group of officals. She was
then sentenced to wear the scarlet letter A, showing her guilt externally. Unable to take
it off, she was forced to show her guilt to the entire settlement. However, the Reverend
Dimmesdale suffered internally, with a scarlet letter of his own engraved in his mind,
and on his chest as well. He felt like he betrayed God, and beat himself in a frenzy to
prove his wrongdoing. He often questioned wheather his authority was true or not. Roger
Chillingworth suffered the least, because he only failed to reveal the secret that he
knew, the father of the child who Hester Prynne was forced to live with. This small
restriction to his life forced him to suffer internally.
I had different likes and dislikes in the novel The Scarlet Letter. There were many
things that needed to be judged to fit into the given catagories, including; character
attitudes, and character decisions. For example, the attitude displayed from the Reverend
Mr. Dimmesdale was rather unnapealing to me. There are different ways of settling ones
guilt rather than whipping oneself in a closet. The one character whose attitude was
appealing to me was that of Pearl's. She showed that mistakes in a relationship often
lead to bad situations. Her mischeif and connection to the devil are examples of just
those situations. Character decisions played an euqally important role. For example, I
thought the descision for Hester not to tell who was the father of Pearl on the scaffold
to be very brave, but was wrong. She could have ended it a lot quicker if she told the
truth. A descision that I supportted was the plan for Hester, the Reverend Dimmesdale and
Pearl to leave town, because it was a way to start a new life.
Certain questions came about when reading The Scarlet Letter. Many of them involved small
details. . For example, why did Hester not tell her daughter at a younger age what the A
embroidered on her clothes meant? Why did the minister wear elaborate garments when
conducting his self-punishment in the closet? However, other questions were involving
larger situations. Why did the minster keep quiet when he knew he wouldn't live for much
longer? What made Hester finnally remove her scarlet letter (for a short period of
time)?
The Puritanic age was a harsh and brutal period of time. At many times, citizens had no
rights whatsoever. The persecuted depended on the fate of the few elite, or the top
officials of town. Their laws were srict regaurding having a child out of wedlock, and if
not followed, a scarlet letter A would place itself upon that person(s). My thoughts on
the whole Puritanic epoch are not sympothetic. The strict rules set guildlines and formed
a society in which much of it had no problems. I would even think that if applied to
currnet times, it would turn society around dramatically.