The Scarlet Letter Essay

The Scarlet Letter Essay

After reading The Scarlet Letter, the spirit of sacrifice of the main characters are clearly shown. As a reader, it’s believed that that those kinds of behaviors of sacrifice are extremely crucial to human beings and can determine one’s value. In the fiction, many characters sacrificed for others who means a lot to them and among all, Hester Prynne is the one who should be most admired by every due to her selfless sacrifice.

Hester Prynne is apparently a tragical character, because of her experience in the book. The story happened in America during its colonial time, Hester has already married to the doctor named Chillingworth who sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived in Boston. While waiting for her husband in America, Hester had an affair with Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent minister, as she has given birth to a child. Being punished for adultery, Hester is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. Thereby, Hester have to endure the despise and humiliation of everyone else in the town for the rest of her life. In her whole life, she need to endure not only others insults and criticisms, but also the secret she has to keep for the safety of the ones she love.

First of all, Hester also made sacrifices to protect the man she loved, Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale is a talented and respected young priest, extremely devout Puritan, his words and actions in full accordance with the doctrine to act. However, his secret love with Hester has changed this all. Having had a personal affair with Hester and having given birth to Pearl, he had no courage to stand on the detention table together with Hester to acknowledge his crimes openly, unable to accept his betrayal of religious faith, and to dare to bear the violation of religious canon Serious consequences, fear of public censure and verbal abuse, there is no courage to publicly acknowledge love with Hester. Because Hester loves Dimmesdale deeply in heart, she protected him no matter how hard the judge and the governor have tried to make her to the public who is the father of her daughter. Hester just endures everything by herself and will not expose the secret, because only then, can Dimmesdale have a normal life and continue his job as a priest without being affected by this affair. To protect the one she loves, Hester can stand so much pain and torment, this is the sacrifice that should be remembered by everyone. “She had borne, that morning, all that nature could endure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of animal life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears.”(63) This is absolutely astonishing that Hester can sacrifice so much for whom she loves.

Second, Hester sacrifices a lot for her child, Pearl, who is determined to be guilty on the day she’s born. At the beginning of the story, while Hester was imprisoned with her daughter, everyone thought that she might hurt Pearl, due to that the born of her child has given her boundless pain and she has to bear so much suffering all because Pearl is the result of her crime. However, there is no hatred or complains, what Hester have for Pearl is just love. When Hester’s