Salvation In Scarlet Letter
Puritans believed that God knows all that has happened, is happening, and will happen. So everything, including salvation and damnation, is already preordained; God chose who would be saved and welcomed into heaven. However, if an individual does not follow Puritan rules, he or she will most certainly be damned. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, set in a Puritan town in the seventeenth century, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a letter A on her chest, also known as the scarlet letter, for the adultery she committed that ended her up with a child. When asked who the father of her child is, she refuses to answer and is forced to stand at the scaffold for three hours. Dimmesdale, the town minister, is asked to try to get the father's
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He chose to keep the secret and be consumed in guilt for seven years, than man up and tell the truth. When asked to try to get the name of Pearl’s father out of Hester, Dimmesdale begs her by speaking,“I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life”(93). Dimmesdale is such a hypocrite. He is telling her that she should not be standing at the scaffold alone, that her “fellow-sinner” should be as well because it takes two to commit adultery. He is the other part of the adulterous act, and he is telling her not to keep this a secret when he is doing the same. Keeping his secret soon led him to become a bit paranoid. Later in the novel it states, “ And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at the scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart”(134). Like in the previous quote he is “hiding his guilty heart.”And he does this in the literal way as well, he often holds his hand over his heart. As if by doing so he is protecting himself from people finding out about his
He chose to keep the secret and be consumed in guilt for seven years, than man up and tell the truth. When asked to try to get the name of Pearl’s father out of Hester, Dimmesdale begs her by speaking,“I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life”(93). Dimmesdale is such a hypocrite. He is telling her that she should not be standing at the scaffold alone, that her “fellow-sinner” should be as well because it takes two to commit adultery. He is the other part of the adulterous act, and he is telling her not to keep this a secret when he is doing the same. Keeping his secret soon led him to become a bit paranoid. Later in the novel it states, “ And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at the scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart”(134). Like in the previous quote he is “hiding his guilty heart.”And he does this in the literal way as well, he often holds his hand over his heart. As if by doing so he is protecting himself from people finding out about his