Nathaniel Hawthorne's Views on Sin in The Scarlet Letter

What is the author saying about sin?

Nathaniel Hawthorne is saying the guilt from sin can kill but a person have to accept the sins they commit to live freely. Holding their sins in causes them to be weary of people. People all have sins that can’t be denied. People may be able to lie to others but their own heart is always truthful. The author uses the guilt of hester and the guilt of dimmesdale as too attempts to show people to let their sins out.

Dimmesdale in the 1850 romance The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is always worried about being found out where hester is living with the consequences of her actions. The townsfolk get over hester’s sin but they treat dimmesdale the same making him feel guilty. He doesn’t have the ability to hold in the secret but is forced too. His sin isn’t the adultery it is the deceit he is required to lie all his clergy he can’t express trust with anyone but hester, and she is the blamed adulterer. The author made it that way. The difference between good and bad is very clear however the characters view of good and bad is blurred. The book makes the hypocrisy of the puritans clear, but changes the view that what they are doing is right. Hawthorne wrote anti-puritan propaganda into his books Telling the people to change their way to not judge before the convicted is proven guilty. Hawthorne put the convicted both prosecution and being accused. Hawthorne's idea is saying no one is sinless and we shouldn't be judging someone on their sins but on the way the present themselves and their actions. Hawthorne is making a statement to the puritans to stop the hypocrisy.

The puritan people still had the very same style of government when he wrote as when he was writing about. The government still fought against sin and not crime. That government system was a ruin of the puritan people's values and honor because it was a way of seeing the wrong doers as less than them which does not change that they may have done it accidentally or did not know it was even a law punishable by what is was by. Than the pastors probably One of the ones who did one of those crimes at one point. He exposes that puritan life is not about your work ethic or your craftsmanship but your social status. The puritans wouldn´t touch hester with a ten foot pole but then they realized she was doing the town good by clothing the poor and the bodies. Hester was not going to wallow around and be remorseful she was going to live with her sin and move on unlike the townspeople she had closure because of pearl. She didn't need to be accepted by the town to do her work she just did it.

Dimmesdale was like the townspeople but didn't tell anyone he was the father of pearl. Dimmesdale was not there for pearl and he was suffering inside he wallowed in pity and despair because he felt he did wrong. He ruined this church and his own life by his lust. Then he slowly died because he didn't know how he could move on. He destroyed his life by getting Hester pregnant. Then forcing Hester to carry the burden of a child alone. He should have resigned from the church admitting he was sinful and joined Hester as his wife. He may have survived with hester instead of dying a lying cheating pastor. Dimmesdale could have saved himself but instead he decides to take his sin to the grave. He did not even have a use for the hiding of it he would have revealed the church was corrupt and should be disconnected from the government. Like the witch trials were very irrelevant and useless.

Hawthorne tried to express his dislike for the puritans by creating a puritan woman that committed adultery and had to live with her given punishment while the man who did it with her suffers inside from the guilt of his decision to be silent as his guilt overtakes him she tries to make the best out of the life she has made for herself. He is dying slowly to try to find his way he ends up with her husband as a roommate who wants to torture him for his crime the roommate found out about. The daughter of the two adulterers named pearl was not treated well by the townspeople. She later ended up being the richest woman in the town dimmesdale died after giving a speech found with the A on his chest the townspeople didn’t assume it was him as the adulterer with Hester. Hester moved to england than came back to be buried next to dimmesdale. After she passed away we are unsure what happened to pearl and we are aware that chillingworth died after dimmesdale had passed away donating all the land to pearl. 

Conclusion

This story was based off a fiction made by Nathaniel Hawthorne who he created as a publicity stunt for a new book of his known as the Scarlet Letter with himself as the narrator. He created a fake letter and said he found it at his workplace. The man used a clever way of playing out his stories to try to figure out how to make them believable. He teaches others to not believe everything that is said.