There Are No Characters In The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter as an exemplum on pride. His creation of Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, and her selflessness was the moral behind keeping her alive. The characters in The Scarlet Letter are nothing more than symbols representing abstract qualities and are dispensable.

Names play an important role in The Scarlet Letter it is Hawthorne's way of distinguishing not just the characters but their personalities. The latter is the most important when considering Hawthorne's characters as abstract symbols. Dimmesdale is especially noted for his dark nature of concealing his association with Hester's scarlet letter. His extreme selfishness and pride blinds him from what the Bible ahs taught him and in this aspect is a one dimensional character as are the Puritans. "Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, half-frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Hester Prynne had stood!" (Hawthorne 139). His extreme fear of someone discovering his secret and losing his high status is just one way Hawthorne manipulates the characters to make the novel more didactic rather than a stream-of-consciousness.

"Hester recalls Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth and home, and Esther of the Old Testament, a woman who intercedes for her people and is often considered and image of inner strength coupled with beauty"(Pennell 83).

Each character is abstractly represented differently; Pearl as nature, Chillingworth as pure evil, Hester as selflessness and Dimmesdale as pride. Roger Chillingworth's...expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now there was something ugly and evil in his face" (Hawthorne 117). Hawthorne again is manipulating the characters to fit the exemplum. The easiest way to understand that the characters are in fact a symbol is to take into account the amount of themes, symbols and motifs Hawthorne incorporates in his novels. "The book is a moving series of symbols within a larger symbol from beginning to end...It is true that these characters are arbitrary manifestations of specific urges...They are not made of flesh and blood so much as they are made of moonlight and abstract qualities" (Gorman 7).

The characters are just disposed of when their purpose has been served. When Dimmesdale confesses his sins on the scaffold, the pride element of his character leaves so Hawthorne kills him off. ""The law we broke I--the sin here awfully revealed!--let these alone be in thy thoughts... God knows; and He is merciful! He hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions...Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost for ever! Praised be His name! His will be done! Farewell!"(Hawthorne 233).

Hawthorne plays God in this scene by realizing that the dynamic characterizations of Dimmesdale is lost and that Dimmesdale must be killed here or the moral of the story could never be conveyed correctly. Then this created a chain event in which Hawthorne again realized that revenge was another bad characteristic and for that Chillingworth had to suffer. "At old Roger Chillingworth's decease, (which took place within the year) and by his last will and testament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both here and in England to little Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne." (Hawthorne 237). The suddenness of his death just magnifies Hawthorne's use of characters not as people but as objects.