Themes

“The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdales feelings as he returned from his interview with Hester lent him unaccustomed physical energy”(211) || Refute: “By giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! By sending yonder dark and terrible old man to keep the torture always at red-heat.” – pg. 234 || Shows how Dimmesdale wanted to hide his sin, because if released others wouldn't of viewed him as a valuable reverend and a man of wisdom. || ==== Disagree: Dimmesdale wanted to tell the town’s people about his sin and he tried to him just wasn’t ready to face the consequences, however, Dimmesdale had this internal guilt that he could not release from within him. ====
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 * **Statement:**
 * 1. Dimmesdale was selfish for not confessing sooner.** || **Theme:** **Past and Present: Don't get caught up in the past; live for the present and now.** ||
 * Agree: If he told the people the truth right away maybe he wouldn’t have gotten so happy or excited after talking to Hester. He Might have been dead by this point in the book if he told the people right away.
 * "Or-can we not suppose it?-guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men."(118)

“He had been driven hither by the impulse of that remorse which dogged him everywhere”(145)
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 * Support: He wanted to uphold his reputation amongst the townspeople || Refute: He did confess his sin in chapter 11 to the people in the church.

"Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so, indeed! They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words." - Pg. 140 ||

Shows how Chillingworth was so consumed by revenge that he was only living while their was revenge to be uphold. When their was no more, he wasted away. || Dimmesdale had sinned by committing adultry with Hester Prynne; but he did not know of her husband back in England. Chillingsworth left Hester alone in the new town to fend for herself and the minister may have found this new abandonned woman beautiful and available. Participating in intercourse before marriage was frowned upon in the Puritan religion, but Dimmesdale had no knowledge of Hesters' husband being alive. "You must needs be a stranger in this region friend"(59). || Shows how Chillingworth has a look on his face so disturbing and malevolent that it burns into the darkness, it makes him appear less human to us. ||
 * **Statement:****2. Chillingworth is mostly responsible for his own ill fate and misfortune.** || **Theme:** **The Nature of Evil: All people have the potential to do bad things, but it is a choice we make.** ||
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 * "This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest triumph and consummation, that evil principle was left with no further material to support it, when, in short, there was no more devils work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly." (237)
 * does? || "Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger Chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there, with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness, after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated."
 * “All his strength and energy – all his vital and intellectual force – seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shriveled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight.” – pg. 237 ||

“But there was a more real life…” pg. 239 ||  || Rachel and Kelly || When Pearl “pointed evidently at her mother’s breast” in anger for removing the A then throws the tantrum, reminds Hester how guilty she and Dimmesdale truly are (205). Hester still deserves to be publicly punished for her sins. || But, through the remainder of Hester’ life, there were indications…scarlet letter…object of love and interest…” pg.238 This, in my opinion, is saying that Hester did not discard the Scarlet Letter because it reminded her of Dimmesdale and she considered the Scarlet Letter as a symbol of her and Dimmesdale.
 * **Statement:****3. Hester has received enough punishment and she should have discraded the letter after Dimmesdale's death.** || **Theme:** **Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition: Acknowledge sins and learn from them.** ||
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 * Hester has received enough punishment, but it was her choice to wear the letter for the rest of her life. She did take off the letter in the forest when she and Dimmesdale were talking. She then later “had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame” (238) meaning that she did not have to return and does not have to take up the shame that she could have left behind. When she started her new life she should have discarded the letter and start anew. || "Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene ofher earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the tourture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul and work out another purity then that which she had lost; more saintlike, because the result of martyrdom." (71) A punishment to herself was staying behind within the community that had witnessed her disgrace. ||
 * Hester should discard the letter because she and Pearl had moved at the end to Europe. This means she would be starting a new life.
 * During the talk in the forest with Dimmesdale she feels free and takes off the letter because she knows that they will be together and he will protect her. She only puts it back on to please Pearl when she throws a tantrum. In her later life, Hester wears the “A” as a reminder of her love, which “not only [did] Hester see no wrong in her love for Dimmesdale,” but if he were living, she would still be with him (272). Hester will eternally be in love with Dimmesdale.
 * "the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. " (157) ||  ||
 * **Statement:****4. Hawthorne thinks there was no hope for the Puritans to change their hypocritical ways; it was too deeply ingrained in their way of life.** || **Theme:****Identity and Society: Live your life by following your own truths and beliefs, not what society deems right.** ||
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 * "The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch,—that is a truth," added a third autumnal matron. "At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madame Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she, —the naughty baggage, —little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever!"

"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart." (2.5-6) || " and as her tears fell upon her fathers cheek, they were a pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever to battle with the world, but be a woman in it."

Hester stayed even after she could have left. She embraced her punishment even after she could have ran away from it all. ||
 * "Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin?" Chapter 3 Paragraph 26.

The Puritans are talking about how Hester has revealed her sin and how they are saying not to show pity for it. They sound like they want her to suffer from the humiliation and not have people feel bad for her. ||  || Rachel and Kelly || When the towns people look at Hester’s A as a gift, “that’s our Hester.” They would praise her for her good deeds, as if the A was for her ability to help, not a stumbling block for her adulterous sins. The sister of Mercy. ||
 * The Puritans will never be able to change their hypocritical and naïve ways. Many still believed his confession of his “sin” was merely a metaphor and thought “it was the mighty and mournful lesson that in the view of infinite purity we are sinners all alike (254).” They chose to believe whatever they want, not what is the truth, “The minister conscious that he was dying – conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels (253).”
 * Support: Failed to aknowledge Dimmesdale's sin, after he confessed.

"It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a newborn infant's." (253) || Refute: Hester did not receive as harsh of a punishment as she could have. "'If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worsipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not!'" [...] 'At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead [...] 'This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die.'" (49) ||