Scarlet Letter Themes

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Demi Zapata Petersen 6 1/22/10 Scarlet Letter Essay Prompt: In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, his characters are more than just people in a novel; they portray a deeper meaning and contribute to the theme. Analyze his rhetorical strategies, how the strategies are conveyed through the use of his characters and events, and how his characters reveal deeper insight into the theme. Nathaniel Hawthorne is a renowned author and praised for his novel, The Scarlet Letter, which is filled to the brim with objects, events, and characters with deeper meanings, mirrored scenes, and characters living in a pool of iron, all playing a part in the novel’s themes. The characters play a vital role, meaning they are the core of the novel. With the characters, themselves being contradictions and representations of hidden meanings, they also demonstrate how society and nature can flood people’s inner minds and coat their original thinking with a layer of enlightenment. Floating throughout this novel is the use of contradictions and irony in living form. Many characters present themselves as one type of human being, yet they turn out to be someone completely opposite. Take Chillingsworth; he is a doctor. On the surface of the water, he is smooth and warm, yet the deeper into the novel, the more frigid he appears to be and the more snake-like he seems. Contradicting what a doctor should be; honest, caring, and compassionate, he is deceitful and exists only in others’ misery. From the forest, he came with his healing techniques and his seemingly happy-to-help attitude that most people were drawn to. But as his name new, chosen name later makes sense, his true nature rises and appears to be a man seeking revenge and growing into more of a monster the longer he reaps his revenged on Dimmesdale. By Hawthorne using names as a way to reflect
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