Sin in The Scarlet Letter Essay

Everyone has committed a sin sometime in his or her lives. No one in the world is perfect. Its a cruel world and the world is full of sin. The world we live in is corrupted. There is no such thing as a perfect world. No one and nothing is perfect. The Scarlet Letter would be a perfect example of this. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main characters are Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, and among these three, Chillingworth commits the greatest sin.

All three of these characters have committed a sin. Hester Prynne has committed a sin by having an affair with Dimmesdale. She committed adultery. She also didnt tell Dimmesdale about Chillingworth. She gets public humiliation on a scaffold because of committing adultery. She suffers a lot. The townspeople called her names many times and made fun of her. They all threw stuff at her and made her feel terrible, but she still kept strong. She never gave away the name of her affair even if people were pressuring her extremely. It takes a lot of courage and strength to do that. Hester was honest most of the time. She didnt hurt anyone or anything. She was the one getting hurt. She was sorry that she had an affair. But people still avoided her and pointed at her and called her names. Hester was depressed and she felt lonely and had no friends. She wanted to die. She felt like she was lost in the world. She felt as if the world didnt care about her or her child, Pearl. All she did was just have an affair and the townspeople exaggerate it. Her affair was a pretty bad sin but it wasnt as bad as Chillingworths. She also learned a lot from this. The letter A became a powerful symbol to her. It became a symbol that represented her. At first it represented shame, but has time passed, it changed to able. She actually became powerful after committing adultery. She learned her mistakes and became a better person. It actually helped her in a way.

Arthur Dimmesdale was Hester Prynnes affair. Dimmesdale was watching the whole time when Hester was taking all the punishment and blame. When Hester was standing on the scaffold, Dimmesdale was there, but he didnt say or do anything about it. He made Hester take all the blame for it which was his sin too. It was Dimmesdales sin too, but Hester was the one who took all the blame for it. Dimmesdale felt very bad because of that. He regretted not doing anything about it. It leads to his deterioration in his physical and spiritual condition. His physical weakness opens up his mind to empathize with others. So he did that by becoming a speaker and a leader. Later on, he meets Hester in pitch darkness and he confesses to her. He says sorry for all the wrong things that hes done. He tells her that its all his fault that this happened to Hester. Hes sorry about hiding his adultery and he confesses. But at one point, he also blames Hester for his suffering, counting her accountable for his torture the past seven years. He refuses to forgive Hester but when he comes to his senses, he realizes that he and Hester are not the worst sinners in the world. There is a sin worse than even him. Chillingworth and his revenge is blacker than Dimmesdales sin (170) which also means that Chillingworth and his revenge is blacker than Hesters sin. After the forest visit, he gets a sudden burst of energy and he goes crazy. He has evil inclinations. He ran through the forest in tremendous speed. He had evil intentions.

Roger Chillingworth was the worst sinner out of all three. He was seeking revenge the whole time. He was jealous of Dimmesdale being Hesters lover. He told lies to Dimmesdale to get what he wanted. He became very evil. He continued to do evil. He looked under Dimmesdales shirt and smiled grimly. He basically tortured Dimmesdale mentally. He was controlling Dimmesdales life. He was telling him lies to get him to do what he wanted him to do. He ruined Dimmesdales life. He hurt him in such a way that Dimmesdale became a bit evil and had evil intentions later on. Chillingworth was trying to get revenge on both Dimmesdale and Hester. He followed them everywhere they went and he was stalking them. He was watching every move that they made. And he had evil intentions in his mind. He wanted to make sure that Dimmesdale and Hester never saw each other again. He was trying to figure out ways to get revenge and hurt Dimmesdale. He took out his anger all on Dimmesdale, but when Dimmesdale died, he had no one to take his vengeance out on. He was upset.

All three characters have committed sins. Same with us. As human beings, we all commit sins everyday. Human beings arent meant to be perfect. We all mistakes and we learn from them. We turn into better people as we make mistakes because we know not to make the same mistakes again. Its like a development process. We sin, and we receive consequences, and we slowly become into better people. We have all sinned and some people sin more than other people. In the Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth committed the greatest sin out of all the other characters, Hester Prynne, And Arthur Dimmesdale.