The Scarlet Letter 11 Essay, Research Paper

The Scarlet Letter

Adultery, betrayal, promiscuity, subterfuge, and

intrigue, all of which would make an excellent coming

attraction on the Hollywood scene and probably a pretty good

book. Add Puritan ideals and writing styles, making it

long, drawn out, tedious, wearisome, sleep inducing,

insipidly asinine, and the end result is The Scarlet Letter.

Despite all these things it is considered a classic and was

a statement of the era.

The Scarlet Letter is a wonderful and not so

traditional example of the good versus evil theme. What

makes this a unique instance of good versus evil is that

either side could be considered either one. Hester could

very easily have been deduced as evil, or the “bad guy,” as

she was by the townspeople. That is, she was convicted of

adultery, a horrible sin of the time, but maybe not even

seen as criminal today. As for punishment, a sentence to

wear a scarlet “A” upon her chest, it would hardly be

considered a burden or extreme sentence in present day. Or

Hester can be seen as rebelling against a society where she

was forced into a loveless marriage and hence she would

be the “good guy,” or girl, as the case may be. Also the

townspeople, the magistrates, and Chillingworth, Hester’s

true husband, can be seen in both lights. Either they can

be perceived as just upholding the law -she committed a

crime, they enforce the law. On the other hand are they

going to extreme measures such as wanting to take Pearl,

Hester’s daughter, away just because Hester has deviated

from the norm, all to enforce an unjust law that does not

even apply to this situation?

Although the subjects of the novel do apply to

important issues in history and could have had influences on

the time period, they were not great. During the times and

in the Puritan community this did not have a large affect on

anything. Sure, they did not want anyone committing

adultery, most were killed if convicted, but it was not

something that upset their way of living in any permanent

manner. To an individual or group who was battling

something backward in the Puritan society, as were many

things, this would have been an inspirational book and

possibly a revelation.

In short, this book could have been exceptional; it

had all the elements of a superb book. Unfortunately,

Hawthorne found himself a rather large thesaurus and added a

bunch of mindless prattle that mellowed out the high

points of the book and expanded on the low points. In many

chapters all he manages to accomplish is to update the lives

of characters, mostly with irrelevant drivel. Also by

expanding on the symbolism of the scarlet letter umpteenth

times he wears it out so that the reader wants nothing more

to do with a dumb “A” on some woman’s chest hundreds of

years ago. Other than that, great book.