Deception and Punishment in The Scarlet Letter and A Tale of Two Cities :: comparison compare contrast essays

Deception and Punishment in The violent garner and A Tale of Two Cities Nathaniel Hawthorn and Charles Dickens in their novels The Scarlet Letter and A Tale of Two Cities, respectively, both use punishment for prank as a recurring theme. Although they do so to polar degrees and in dissimilar manners, both authors agree that deception is a vileness that requires punishment. In The Scarlet Letter, the heroine, Hester Prynne conceived a barbarian out of wedlock. Despite the pleas and demands of the clerical community, she did not reveal the identity of the father. The Puritanical community in which she lived in demanded her to give up her conspirator or bear the consequences of the deed alone. callable to her doggedness, the townsmen sentenced her to wear a scarlet letter *A* embroidered on her chest. The A served as a symbol of her crime, was a punishment of humiliation, gave her constant shame, and reminded her of her sin. Hester*s penalization was a prime exampl e where deception led to nix consequences in that she would have been spared the entire encumbrance of the crime if she did not lead on the townspeople. Although seemingly, her paramour did not escape punishment. In fact, the father of her bastard child took a more severe sentence. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale seemed to be an upstanding, young priest. The hale town liked him and respected him as a holy man. Thus, his deception was much more direct and extreme when he did not own that he impregnated Hester Prynne. Unlike Hester, he was not publicly punished. So although Hester overcame her ordeal and went on with her life, Dimmesdale exacted a constant, physical and mental reprobation on himself. This inside pain was so intense that his physical health began to reflect his versed sufferings. In the end, he redeemed himself by his confession in lie of the whole town, but his long endurance of the secret took its toll and he died. Roger Chillingworth had a similar fate. Like Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, Hester*s husband, keeps his relation to her a secret. Chillingworth*s deception allows him to become consumed with hatred and the desire to inflict his revenge on the one who stole his wife*s