Hester Prynne And Huckleberry Finn Comparison Essay
958 Words4 Pages
Upon first inspection, Hester Prynne and Huckleberry Finn may not appear to have much, if anything, in common. Hester Prynne is an ostracized woman and mother in 17th century Puritan Boston, while Huckleberry Finn is a 14 year old boy essentially running away from home in the antebellum south; their stories are vastly different from one another. However, there are certain similarities between these two characters and their specific set of circumstances. Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn share a common trait; a protagonist that rejects their society and who then must learn to coexist with the moral and religious influences that bolster it. Though Huckleberry’s rejection may be more external and…show more content… The adulterous affair she had with Arthur Dimmesdale before the beginning of the novel went against what the people around her believed in, Dimmesdale himself included. The women waiting for Hester to emerge from the jail complain that her sentence is too lenient; some even calling for nothing less than death. After wasting away for seven long years, Dimmesdale finally makes his thoughts known when he later says, “The law we broke! – the sin here so awfully revealed! …It may be, that, when we forgot our God, - when we violated our reverence each for the other’s soul, - it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion” (229). The act was not only considered a sin, but a crime, as…show more content… This is only for one reason; her love for Dimmesdale. Her one crime causes Hester to be ostracized and considered lower in society than people living on the street; she even faces the possibility of her daughter being taken from her. She endures all of this, though, without complaint. She eventually explains to Dimmesdale, “What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other!” (176). In Hester’s mind, love, more specifically her love for Dimmesdale, takes priority over everything else. Though she believes in God, she rejects her society’s idea that he finds her true love sinful and even damnable. Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opens with a frustrated Huckleberry having a hard time feeling content with his place in life. He does not want to be “sivilized” by the Widow, but he is, understandably, unhappy living with his father when he is taken by him, as well. Only once he escapes his father and is travelling the Mississippi River with Jim does he truly seem to feel happy and free. In doing this, Huckleberry rejects his society and what they believe in, literally running away from it with a slave; a man who they consider to be less than