scarlet letter sympathy
...l; - and that, moreover, as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea; - they have not been bold to put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. The penalty thereof is death. But, in their great mercy and tenderness of heart, they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life, to wear the mark of shame upon her bosom” (1366). This is basically stating that the punishment of death is to harsh for Hester with the exception that she is young, beautiful, useful, and doubtless, and her husband could possibly be dead. Instead of sentencing her to death, they decide to force her to stand on a platform in front of the puritan people for three hours and place a mark on her body so that she may feel ashamed for her sin for the rest of her life. Sadly her daughter, Pearl, doesn’t share this sympathy, but within due time, she begins to have the sympathy that her mother has had all this time. The sympathy between her body and this mark, which is a red letter A, increases throughout the story. The mark on her body should represent her experience with adultery, but it makes her stronger and she begins to look at things differently. Her puritanical thoughts transform into freethinking thoughts as time goes by. She begins to see the true colors of people without having to speak to them. She begins to know and understand everyone else that may be sinning within the so-called puritan community. This makes her upset with the people in the community, because she feels that it is unfair for the people to treat her so badly if they are sinning against God by not following the puritanical laws like they should. She changes some of her ways drastically. She stops praying for her enemies, but continues to help people in her community, and her faith fades away. The people also look down on her because of the clothes that she makes. The people seem to pretend as if they don’t like them because of their puritanical religion. Dimmesdale is another character that experiences such sympathy. He carries a lot of burdens, and because of this, he becomes a great minister. He is able to sympathize with others by preaching to them in relation to things that has happened to him in the past. All his burdens also have certain sympathy with his body, because all of his burdens begin to take a toll on his body. He becomes very sick. The...