Corruption In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

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Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804. He was raised in a Puritan family and his family members were very impactful in Puritan society. His great-grandfather was one of the judges who was part of the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne was disgusted by having the same name as his ancestors so he added the ‘w’ to Hathorne, which he went by in his writings. In 1850, Hawthorne wrote what is considered to be his greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter. The novel is set in a Puritan community in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1640s. Hester Pryne is a young woman in the town that performs an act of adultery with a man unknown throughout most of the novel. She is forced to wear an ‘A’ on her breast, which is called ‘The Scarlet Letter’,…show more content…
“Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to Hester Pryne the entire track along which she had be treading since her happy infancy” (Hawthorne 43). Hester Pryne has been placed on the scaffold to be judged for her sins, the whole community has come in attendance to take part in this event. Hawthorne shows the reader how corrupt the Puritan society is when he puts Hester up as an individual against the whole society, a society that is driven together by a common, misguided belief that those who make mistakes are completely wicked and filled with evil. “The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her,- so much power to do, and power to sympathize,- that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Pryne, with a woman’s strength” (Hawthorne 106). The Scarlet Letter “A” has changed significance, Hester now embraces the symbol on her breast and the townspeople don’t see it as too harsh of a punishment anymore. Hawthorne now uses the theme, Fate vs. Free Will, to show that Hester has made the most of the “punishment”, which now doesn’t appear to be that severe. These themes and motives show us Hawthorne’s unending hatred for Puritan society and how his motives drive him to write in the way he…show more content…
In 17th century Massachusetts, the Puritan religion was thriving and they had morals that many people didn’t agree with. Hawthorne could have wrote a piece solely bashing the Puritans, but instead he decided to write a novel in which he presents the idea in the form of a story with themes. Some of the themes he uses are: Truth vs. Lies, Guilt vs. Innocence, Individual vs. Society, and Fate vs. Free Will. With this style of writing, Hawthorne is able to expand and really prove his point: which is his goal of showing the Puritan’s corruption. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne makes use of themes to show his reasoning in writing the novel, which is to show how he thinks the Puritan society is corrupt and
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