Scarlet Letter
For thousands of years, humans have confronted their sinfulness. Some trust in their religious faith to help with their struggles, some sin more to hide the truth. But in the end, man must stand alone – as a sinful creature before God. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale has a difficult time finding a place to relieve his sin. The Scarlet Letter’s scaffold is a place for the protagonist to find peace with himself. That scaffold holds more importance than just somewhere to condemn prisoners. It is the one place where Dimmesdale felt liberated to say anything he wishes. In Puritan culture, the scaffold is used to humiliate and chastise prisoners, be it witches at the stake, thieves in the stocks, or a murderer hanging from the gallows. In The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold was viewed more as a place of judgement. “Meagre ... was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold.” (p. 63) Indeed, it was used for castigation,......
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Approximate Word Count: 700
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)
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