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Sara Moon

Ms. Moss

Pre-AP English 10 Honors

6 November 2017

Hester At Her Needle

In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne has recently been

released from prison as an adulteress with her new baby. She remains conflicted about staying in

her New England settlement or leaving. Hawthorne utilizes parallelism, shifts from lengthy to

simple syntax, and shifts between guilt-ridden and joyful tone to convey Hester’s inner turmoil

regarding whether she should stay as well as her connection to Dimmesdale.

Hawthorne incorporates parallelism to display Hester’s reasoning for staying in the

Puritan settlement. He articulates, “her motive for continuing a residence of New England, -was

half a truth, and half a self-delusion.” The parallel structure expresses that each repeated part is

of equal importance. Both the truth and the delusion are equal in reasons why Hester is

struggling with the choice of staying in New England. While speaking to herself, Hester

concludes, “Here… had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly

punishment.” The action and consequence are inserted into parallel structure to represent that

they both are why Hester is choosing to stay. Hester’s inner turmoil comes from her punishing

herself by staying to receive the consequence of her actions. The purpose of the parallelism is to

demonstrate that Hester’s thoughts and punishment are balanced within her turmoil.

The tone of Hester’s thoughts changes dramatically from penitential to light and carefree.

Hawthorne creates the tone through dark diction such as “guilt,” “punishment,” “torture,”

“shame,” and “purge.” This guilty tone expresses Hester’s obligation to punish herself. Her
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thoughts are dark because she wants to make her life miserable. The tone shifts when the diction

shifts to upbeat such as “passionate” and “joy.” Hester is conflicted with the hope that she will

end up with Dimmesdale. The hope could be false which is why she struggles with feeling

happy. The purpose of the shift in tone contrasts Hester’s dark and light thoughts and depict the

inner struggle of her punishment.

Hawthorne’s syntax in the form of sentence length changes depending on how strongly

Hester believes in something. Making use of lengthy syntax, Hawthorne notes, “There dwelt,

there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that,

unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgement, and make

that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution.” Elevated, descriptive syntax

reflects on the long thoughts that Hester has while deliberating about her conflict. Hester spends

an abundance of time contemplating if she should stay in New England, so Hawthorne reflects

that with longer more time-consuming sentences. A shift in syntax is created when Hawthorne

remarks, “She barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon.” She

made a clear choice to stop thinking about her connection to Dimmesdale. The author follows

suit and adds a clear simple sentence. The shift from longer to shorter syntax contrasts Hester

and her problem to make up her mind with the moment she finally does.

Hawthorne uses a variety of styles in order to convey Hester Prynne’s inner turmoil of

staying in the New England settlement. Parallelism expresses Hester’s balanced thoughts. Guilty

tone contrasts with a merry tone to depict Hester’s whirl of emotions. A shift in syntax reflects

on Hester’s decisive and indecisive thoughts. All of this is done to show how troublesome life

can be after making one mistake.