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Hypocrisy, often seen as one of the vilest manifestations of the human ego, is also one of the most inevitable and foreseeable. It is the simplest, and yet one of the most intricate aspects of being human. We all wish to judge and not be judged, for our own voice is always the strongest in our mind. Hypocrisy runs rampant in daily life; all one has to do is turn on the television set at our convenience to be forced to consider the meanings and implications of our own actions. Can we, in all seriousness, sing of peace on earth and goodwill towards men in the coming weeks while we continue to drop bombs and execute other military actions in the name of revenge? Should we trust politicians who want to sacrifice civil rights in order, they say, to preserve liberty?
In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses hypocrisy to prove the moral of the story, honesty, through his characters, symbols, and ironies. Arthur Dimmesdale is a man of contradictions. The populace of Boston looks upon him upon as a saint, and yet he hides a great sin in his heart. Dimmesdale is in a constant state of poor physical health and mental anguish because he knows he is guilty of adultery, yet he cannot admit to his transgression. He wears a self-inflicted scarlet letter comparable to Hester's, and suffers, as does Hester; yet in his case he is the one ostracizing and torturing himself as opposed to Hester, who has become the town pariah. In his final hour, Dimmesdale climbs the scaffold and announces that the devil hid his scarlet letter cunningly from men Now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you!
He bids you to look again at Hester's scarlet letter it is but the shadow of what he bears on his own breast Behold! Behold a dreadful witness of it! (Hawthorne 232), tearing away his robe to finally reveal the secret hypocrisy that, in the end, killed him. Roger Chillingworth is a man who, despite the fact that he was once a warm, intellectual fellow, has been transformed in the name of revenge into an evil, malicious sort of creature. He is well aware that he is becoming evil, and yet tells Hester it is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! (160). In the act of avenging a transgression upon himself, he commits an even greater sin by violating, in cold blood, the sanctity of the human heart (179).
In the end, Chillingworth has become a fiend, his heart so twisted by his own doings that he is, without a doubt, but a shadow of the compassionate man he once was. Hester and Chillingworth did sin against him, but it is his own hypocrisy that changes him. The scarlet letter is the most prominent symbol in the novel. Hawthorne uses it to convey an array of different meanings, and its identity, as well as the wearers, changes over the course of the novel. In the beginning, it stands for adultery and makes Hester an outcast. Although it isolates her, it allows her to see the shame in the hearts of others.
The very law that condemned her-a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm-had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy (72). With the scarlet letter, Hester realizes the hypocrisy of the town in branding her for her sin, which is, in fact, their sin as well. It is meant to keep her down, and yet it cannot chain her spirit. By Hester's own actions, the townsfolk eventually come to see the letter as denoting her as able, not as an adulteress. Irony is one of the most effective devices Hawthorne utilizes throughout the novel. For example, although he is the father of pearl, whom the townsfolk look upon as a demon child, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is revered as saintly.
Dimmesdale, however, sees himself as a vile, low creature, questioning himself whether the grass would ever grow on [his grave], because an accursed thing must there be buried! , (131). He will not, however, come clean, because if he were to confess he would be treated the same as Hester and would not be able to be in a position to help others in their crises. The truth that will free him from his own prison, therefore, cannot be uttered. It is this hypocrisy that eventually leads to his characters demise. One can infer, then, that the underlying moral of the story is truth.
It is a noble thing to be honest, yet, as Oscar Wilde stated, Truth is rarely pure, and never simple. Truth goes hand-in-hand with hypocrisy, which Hawthorne uses throughout the novel through his characters, symbols, and ironies in order to show the importance of truth-not only to oneself, but to the world as well. It is sometimes the most painful, dreadful thing in the world to have to be honest, and yet ultimately, only the truth will set us free. The characters in The Scarlet Letter are not so unlike us in their actions, for it is only human to lie, and it is only human to hold double standards when taking our own sins into account. We should take this novel not as one lesson, but two: that our sins are not so small or great as to be perceived less or more harshly than those of others; and to, above all else, be true. Bibliography Hawthorne, Nathaniel; The Scarlet Letter
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Research essay sample on Moral Of The Story Scarlet Letter
