Beautiful Disasters: Pearl As A Living Breathing Scarlet Letter :: essays research papers

Sometimes beauty is found in places as unprovided for(predicate) as a rosebush growing outside of a prison in a puritan colonial village. Pearl Prynne is an unearthly beautiful barbarian with a wild spirit born under unimaginably loathly conditions, all of which are somehow related to the ideas, actions, and views of others on Hesters punishment. In Nathaniel Hawthornes The red Letter, Pearl serves as Hesters living, breathing Scarlet letter.Pearl evokes the same emotion and reactions from the townspeople, as does the sanguine letter. The people formulation at the slight sense of pride Hester has in her letter in the same way they look at the way Hester lets Pearl do whatever she wants. They feel Hester isnt fit to raise the child. The extremity of scuttlebutt from the females of the village in the beginning of the book is only matched by the tote up that Pearls wild attitude stirs up later on. Hesters A is the example for all of what sin is. The A makes Hester much avoided and the parents enunciate their children to watch out for her. Theses same parents say the same things to their kids about avoiding Pearl, who is ill-famed for her uncontrollable behavior with her peers and other adults. Just as infamous as Hesters A for the wild sinful actions it symbolizes.Like Hesters scarlet letter, Pearl shows extreme beauty in a form that is non traditional, positive, tame, or fully accepted. When Hester crafts the A that she has to wear on her chest, She uses a deep, fiery shade of red and embroiders it very intricately with bright gold thread. The A was meant to mark Hester in a negative manor its purpose is to let everyone know that Hester is a sinner. Hester takes something extremely negative and makes it appear as passionately beautiful. Hawthorne portrays Pearl in a very detailed specific manor, meant to put up emphasis on the similarities between Pearl and the A. She is the symbol of Hesters sin but the tone that is used when referring to her makes her out to appear as a stunningly beautiful creature. The narrator states, thither was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost ( ). Even the adjectives he uses in describing Pearl suggest something color related (hue). There is a feeling of wildness and uncontrollably in Pearls appearance more specifically in her eyes.