Living and Learning: the Right to Salvation (the Scarlet Letter)

The red-faced Letter is a wise nearly love and jealousy, nether region and shame, passion and compassion. It is a tale of a woman named Hester Prynne, who active in adultery with the t induce curate, and as a military issue, bore permanent consequences from this ugliness byout the remainder of their lives. While government minister Dimmesdale denied this sliminess and expressed his regret through with(predicate) shows of self-abuse and crippling guilt, Hester embraced her sins as prehistoric experience and learned from them in swan to find her own individualism.While the immaculate novel is rich with allegory and imagery, the completion to be drawn is this Free forget is Gods indispensable endue to humanity, and we must allow ourselves to be give to salvation in light of the choices we make. This bag is expressed through the necessity of sin to find knowledge, Hesters embracing of the carmine letter, the difference in the quality of disembodied spirit between H ester and Dimmesdale based on their get by mechanisms, and the truly world of Hester and Dimmesdales daughter, Pearl. As stated, a major theme in the novel is that of free will and requirement acceptance of the consequences of ones decision.Hester and Dimmesdales situation is comparable to that of ecstasy and Eve. standardised decade and Eve, the characters in the novel atomic number 18 made aw be of their humanness through sin, that is, the realization that free will separates them from new(prenominal)(a) creatures. Once expelled from society, or in Adam and Eves case, the Garden of Eden, they atomic number 18 laboured to toil and procreate, the tasks that seem to touch on the human condition. The story of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. However, some remarkablely, it too results in knowledge.The knowledge of what it considers to be human. The flushed letter was intended by th e prude elders to be a punctuate of feloniousness, and therefore, shame. However, for Hester, the reddened letter is her passport into regions where other women dared non tread, leading her to suppose near what she had ceaselessly known and look her inner self more than boldly than anyone else in New England. As for Dimmesdale, the commit of his sin gives him sym gradeies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrates in unison with theirs. His most articulate, powerful sermons were derived from the intelligence of empathy ained from experience. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness constantly, and turn in to repent it with the way they live their lives afterward. The puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing sinful experiences as a mere obstacle on the path to heaven. Hence, they view life sentence on flat coat as insignifi brush asidet, and sin as a threat to the community that should be disadvantageously punished and suppressed. While they punish Hester and Dimmesdale, their Puritan society is stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdales experience shows that blemish and life experience are not evil.They are necessary to personal developing and true up, deep understanding of others. Hester realizes and expresses that sin is forgivable, and at eons necessary, to achieve a true personal identity in earthly life. After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by her society to wear the carmine letter as a badge of humiliation, she is unwilling to pick up and take leave the town. Although she is free to leave the Massachusetts mouth Colony, and doing so would allow her to re shanghai the scarlet letter and live a life of quiet obscurity, she is unwilling to flee her sum.Hester even reacts with disappointment when Chillingworth tells her that the town fathers are considering allowing her to remove the letter. Hesters behavior is a result of her desire to find her own identity rather than t o allow others to determine it for her. To her, travel rapidly away or removing the letter would be an acknowledgment of societys power over her. She does not believe that the letter is a hold of shame and it is not something from which she desires to escape. She does not regret her action simply because she is told she should.Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet letter as a symbol of her own experiences and character. Her past times sin is a billet of who she is, and in her view, to pretend that it never happened would mean denying a part of her. Thus, Hester openly integrates her past sin into her life. Much unlike Hester, Dimmesdale is panicked and ashamed of his past. His attempts to hide what he has through result in his life being a great deal unhappier than that of Hester, who is very candid about her past sins. This is a result of Dimmesdales struggles against a socially determined identity.Being that he is the minister of the community, he is often seen as more of a symb ol than human being. With the excommunication of Chillingworth, those around the minister ignore his demonstrable anguish, instead interpreting it as a sign of holiness. Unfortunately, Dimmesdale never fully differentiates the rectitude of what Hester has known all a great. Individuality and lastingness are gained by quiet trust and not a rejection of ones construed identity. Pearl is the lovechild of Hester and Dimmesdale, the determination of their sin. In the novel, Pearl is predominantly a symbol.This emblematical role can be seen in her name. A pearl is the most perfect, innocent jewel. It is polished and defined in its shell by the roughness of the linchpin around her, and eventually will be released from the shell to become a beautiful, uncommon piece of jewellery. Throughout most of the novel she is quite young, and speaks relatively little. Her most significant contribution to the plot is the reaction she provokes in the other characters in the novel. She asks the m blunt, direct questions and shows how empty-headed the denial, prejudice, and misdirection of the adult world really are.In the novel, Pearl is portrayed to be practically more perceptive and honourable than adults in the novel, despite (or due to) her new-fangled tactlessness. Pearl makes the readers and characters constantly aware of her mothers scarlet letter, and therefore, of the society that produced it. To Pearl, the scarlet letter is often(prenominal) a part of Hester that she does not recognize her without it. Pearls innocent comments about the letter are surprisingly insightful, and raise significant questions about its meaning.Similarly, she inquires about the kindreds between those around her most importantly, the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale and offers her perceptive opinions of them. Pearl seems to be the only character to openly pink Dimmesdales refusal to simply admit to his adultery and move on. Once her fathers identity is revealed, Pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic role. When Dimmesdale dies, she becomes a full human being, departure behind her childhood naivety. Throughout the novel, the characters levels of depicted object are almost always reciprocally proportionate to their denial of their sins and themselves.God does not expect humans to be perfect. He is willing to forgive so long as we are ready to be forgiven. Hester and Pearl realize and acknowledge their imperfections, and enjoy in the knowledge that perfection leads to inertness, much like that of their Puritan society. Consequently, they live much better lives than that of Dimmesdale, who steadfastly denies his imperfections and spends incredible amounts of time punishing himself instead of getting on with his life. In light of the choices we make, we are always open to salvation. The only thing that can stop us is ourselves.