Ignominy in the Puritan Community Essay Example for Free

Ignominy in the prude Community EssayThe cognomen of Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter refers to the literal symbol of ignominy that Hester Prynnes conjunction forces her to wear as a reminder of her lousiness. Though the word ignominy is used in sympathetic passages that describe Hester Prynnes debase as an adulteress and out-of-wedlock mother, its use at the same time reveals an passing critical exposition of Hesters community of interests Hawthorne finds that what is truly disgraceful is the way the community relishes and exploits the opportunity to punish one of its members. Through powerful diction and imagery describing Hesters sin and through saintly representations of Hesters dish aerial and wholeness, Hawthorne reveals his sympathy toward Hester. The vote counter commiserates with Hester when the reader first encounters her walking to her daily public shaming upon the marketplaces scaffold.He writes, her beauty shone out and made a halo of misfortune and i gnominy in which she was enveloped (50). The word halo suggests an angelic, even saintly quality, compared to the sin for which she is being in public disgraced as punishment, making her circumstance more complex than simply one of punished sin. That she is enveloped by disgrace implies that her shame derives more from her surroundings than from her sin Hawthornes use of misfortune also demonstrates the cashiers sympathy toward Hester, again suggesting that her disgrace comes as much from the communitys display of her sin as from the sin itself. Hawthorne portrays Hester sympathetically yet again in her encounter with Chillingworth in the prison. The disguised physician declares Hester to be a statue of ignominy, before the people (68). Ironically, Chillingworth, in the character of a healer, here admonishes rather than helps Hester. His words, intended to threaten and punish Hester, in fact, spark sympathy for her in the reader.Similarly, later in the novel, while Hester and Di mmesdale talk in the forest, briefly away from the opprobrium of the Puritan community, Hawthorne describes how Hester Prynne essential take up again the burden of her ignominy (170), on her return to the settlement. The use of the words must and again reveal Hesters continual forced obligation to wear and be a symbol of shame in her community, and show again the narrators sympathy toward her. The fact that she is burdened by disgrace illustrates the extreme weight of her painful, shunned experience, thus establishing the cause for the narrators sympathy for Hester. As Hawthorne shows empathy regarding Hester as she leaves the prison, he also condemns the harsh experience inflicted on her by the community, The very law that condemned herhad held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy (71).The words terrible ordeal not only reinforce the narrators sympathy toward the protagonist, but also suggest that the narrator is judging the community, not Hester. By revealing the c ommunitys enjoyment and cruelty in punishing Hester, Hawthorne pings the Puritans ideas of justice and mercy through both assertive diction and direct communication with the reader. When A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys stare at the ignominious letter on her breast (52), the reader sees the eager pleasure and excitement witnesses experience from Hesters circumstance. Here Hesters disgrace has become both an entertainment and an educational device. The narrator continues with, she perchance underwent an agonyas if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to despise and trample upon (52). With this description, Hesters humanity is maintained, even when the community, all of it, objectifies her as a teaching tool.The image of her heart flung, spurned and trampled upon demonstrates both the narrators sympathy toward Hester and exasperation toward Puritan society, regardless of the age of the member. Shortly after his description of the schoolboys callous treatment of Hester, the narrator continues with a harsh account of the scaffold and smash once employed upon it, that instrument of discipline that represented the very ideal of ignominy (52). The pillory reflects the nature of the communitys sense of justice, and the narrator finds it extremely harsh. The word ideal, often associated with perfection, suggests that the pillory signifies the ultimate desired effect of ignominy public shame from which the sinner cannot turn away.Next, it would seem that Hawthorne speaks out directly and emotionally to the reader, declaring, There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature, whatever be the delinquencies of the individual, no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his tone for shame (52). Hawthorns use of word methinks suggests his forceful personal address on this issue of cruelty he weighs in powerfully against the maliciousness of the Pilgrim community that punishes Hester, even if it has not subjected her t o the pillory. The word no implies Hawthornes view that this punishment is an absolute violation of human decency on the part of some(prenominal) community that turns a criminal into a victim by inflicting the use of a pillory. The letter A Hester must wear shows that the Puritans have depersonalized Hester as part of her punishment for committing adultery.The Puritan community is again portrayed as disgraceful when John Wilson, the eldest clergyman of Boston (60), steps forward above the scaffold where Hester continues to stand. He had carefully prepared himself for the occasion (63). Clearly, the words carefully prepared show Wilson relishing the public opportunity to punish Hester. He delivers to the community a chat on sin, in all its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious letter (63). His repeated reference to the scarlet letter underscores his depersonalization of Hester in her disgrace, without any consideration of her human suffering.The word ignominious reflects as much about the opportunistic clergyman and the punishing Pilgrim audience as it does about Hesters sin. The narrator continues, So forcefully did Wilson dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the peoples heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination (63). The aloofness of this sermon, and the nature of Wilsons rolling delivery show the clergymans intention to hammer his message into the crowd and fire up its punishing judgment.Hawthorne continues to criticize the community as he places Hester historically at the site where she was first disgraced. The narrator notes, If the ministers voice had not kept her there, there would only have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy (211). Implied is the idea that the power of public shaming by the community causes her to remain. Specifically, by noting that the scaffold is where the first hour of her life of i gnominy began the author criticizes the community by revealing that Hester did not experience ignominy until being publicly disgraced on the scaffold, even though her sin had been committed many months prior.With his use of the word ignominy, Hawthorne repeats throughout The Scarlet Letter the cruelty, judgmental attitude, and narrow-mindedness of Puritan society. He portrays Hesters community as condemning sinners mercilessly, refusing to accept ideas that are foreign to their ways of living or thinking. In this way, the townspeople depersonalize Hester, suggesting that she and her disgrace are one. Hester is seen as her sin, not as a complex human being with complicated, still unknown, circumstances.