Max Faller Scarlet Letter essay
Pride
Morality
Love
Hawthorne conveys his views on love, pride, and morality in the following chapters: Another View of Hester, The Pastor and His Parishioner, The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter, and Conclusion
The most obvious abstraction of Hawthorne’s is the idea of love. Hester and Dimmsdale have a passion that society cannot grasp and come to terms with, and thus they cannot manifest their feelings in the same way as a married couple. But this is not the only love that appears in the novel. Hester shows her love to the community even though she is an outcast: “None so ready as she to give her little substance to every demand of poverty; even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the good brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch’s robe… she came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble.” (105) But the love between Dimmsdale and Hester is the strongest in the novel. He relinquishes himself to her: “Think for me, Hester! Thou art strong. Resolve for me!” (126) Then he continues on the next page for her advise. And finally, she says she will run away with him to Europe, saying: Thou shalt not go alone!” to his desperate remark “I must die here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone!” (128) Dimmsdale requires companionship. Mankind cannot live in isolation with a sinful nature; all require people in order to survive. But what kills Dimmsdale is the way he views his love. He sees their relationship as sinful and says this to Hester on the scaffold: “It may be, that, when we forgot our God, -- when we violated our reverence for each other’s soul, -- it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and he is merciful! He hath proved his mercy, most of...