Theme Of Deception In The Scarlet Letter

723 Words3 Pages
In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, one of the characters faces the struggle of having to keep a secret. The use of deception to achieve one self’s goals, or to hide one’s past, is a theme present in the novel. In this novel, some characters use deception to hide secrets from themselves and from the rest of the town. Their choice to reveal or keep a secret affects how the characters change throughout the novel and how the novel progresses as a whole. Instead of demonstrating that keeping a secret can lead to success, it teaches the reader something completely different. Hawthorne tries to make a connection between secrets held and the state of destruction that those who hold the secret have to face. Hester Prynne is a young woman living in Boston whose husband had left to Europe. Her husband never came back and therefore she began to believe he was lost. She commits adultery, gives birth to a girl called Pearl and now has to face the whole town with her sin. She gets punished and is forced to wear a letter “A”…show more content…
He had finally reached the spot in which he couldn’t move on with his life anymore. He stands up in the platform in which Hester used to stand, and confesses his sin to the whole town by ripping off his shirt and showing the carved letter “A” in his chest. Right after this, he dies. A character’s success in achieving goals not always depends on keeping a secret, but on revealing it. Dimmesdale’s choice to keep the secret affects the plot as a whole because it is what brings mystery to the story. We never really know, only suspect, that Dimmesdale is Pearl’s father. We have to figure it out by clues and by analyzing the situations in the novel. If Dimmesdale would have revealed the secret before he let it destroy him, maybe things would have turned out differently and he would have achieved success. He didn’t choose the right moment to divulge it because it was too
Show More
Related

  • Sin In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

    977 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Scarlet Letter carries many themes and one major theme is “sin”. As the three main characters carry on many sins throughout the this novel which are Dimmesdale, Chillingsworth, and Hester Prynne. These three major characters carry a big role in the society, Dimmesdale being the minister and Chillingsworth being the doctor and Hester being a housewife. In the novel Hester wears her sin on her chest the letter “A” reminding her of her sin every single day of her life. There is Dimmesdale who

    Read More

More about Theme Of Deception In The Scarlet Letter

Open Document