FREE ESSAY ON HAMLET

HAMLET

True redemption of sin comes from suffering. When a person goes against what they judge as
wrong, the only way to be freed of the guilt that their actions have caused is to feel
the pain emotionally from the guilt of their sin. The guilt they feel on the inside and
the shame they have to face others is their atonement. Feeling that guilt shows that the
person has recognized their sin as wrong and the constant reminder from the pain of guilt
and shame of the sin forces the person to change their ways. Recognizing the sin and
changing the ways that are inside the person that could possibly justify the sin, is the
definition of true atonement and redemption. Others find that emotional suffering is
insubstantial, and they need something more tangible to truly suffer from. Therefore,
they turn their manifested emotional pain into physical pain by means of self injury, to
have the physical pain serve as the atonement instead of the emotional suffering since
the person cannot relate to their emotional pain and by not relating to the emotional
pain they cannot use it as an atonement because they don't experience it as the real pain
that it is. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter shows how each type of suffering
(emotional and physical) redeems the person and how the person is affected by his/her
suffering. Set in a New England town in the 1640's, two characters with the same sin of
adultery atone and redeem themselves differently but both are redeemed in the end. Hester
atones physically while Dimmesdale, her lover and reverend of the community, atones
emotionally but both are only redeemed when they each atone in both ways of atonement,
and only through suffering.
Hester must atone for her sin physically for everyone to see but also for herself because
she can't handle the manifestation of the guilt inside her. It overwhelms her to have an
illegitimate child to raise on her own, to be the symbol of evil in the community and to
know that she has sinned not only according to society's laws but her own morals of right
and wrong. She transforms her emotional, undealable burden into deliberate physical pain
by wearing her scarlet A. Hester never cries throughout the story, she lets the A cry for
her. Crying would relieve her of some of her burden and she's physically punishing
herself by not letting herself have this relief. The A serves as a symbol of her path of
atonement, by showing others that she has sinned and by reminding herself of her sin. She
knows that the A will eventually give her the relief of her burden of guilt and regret
inside of her so she lets the A cry. Hester's emotional guilt is not just from committing
adultery but it started building up inside her when she married Chillingworth. She sought
out this love that she was denied from Chillingworth and found it in Dimmesdale.
Dimmesdale gave her the love that she was missing but in the seven years that she had no
contact with Dimmesdale, after their affair, she constantly needed her A so she could
concentrate on the physical anguish it gave her and not deal with the emotional longing
she felt about not being with the man she loves. Hester's A is constantly reminding her
of her sin and causing her pain, but it also gives her relief, knowing that the A will
lead to her redemption. She gets addicted to the relief, and the A's constant reminder of
Dimmesdale's love for her and it tells her that her act wasn't a sin but an act of love
and she relies on the A do this for her. It is clearly seen that Hester is addicted to
the relief that the painful A gives her because when she has the oppurtunity to take it
off she refuses. Hester removes the A in the forest when she is rejoined with Dimmesdale,
her love, and she didn't need it to cry for her anymore. She only removes it for a short
time because then her daughter Pearl, the result of her sin with Dimmesdale, doesn't
recognize her own mother without it. Hester suddenly feels a rush of dark emotions come
over her and doesn't know how to deal so she tells her daughter to get her the A that she
threw on the ground so she can put I back on so it can deal with her problems for her.
Hester contemplates suicide a few times in the story but that would be her easy way out
of the pain because that would redeem her physically before she had the chance to atone
to herself, and fully forgive herself. Hester wears her A physically (externally) to
redeem herself emotionally (internally) because it took her guilt and turned it into
physical pain, which she could understand. 
Dimmesdale atones emotionally to himself for his sin because he has sinned to himself.
The community doesn't even know that he has committed a sin which deteriorates him
inside, knowing that he would have to come out and confess this information in front of
them all. He whips an A onto his chest so only he can see it and feel the pain of the
scars and be reminded of his guilt and his need for true atonement. All he needs to do to
complete his atonement is to confess to the public, but he holds back because he knows
that as the town's spiritual leader is he transgresses a law and is able to forgive
himself there must be holes in the system that they don't see, and this would put doubts
into their minds about their whole religion. After he has atoned to himself internally he
must atone externally by confessing on the scaffold with Hester, then showing his A, so
he can finally take on his share of the burden that Hester has had to carry alone, being
the only symbol of evil in the town. Dimmesdale needed the A on the inside first to
redeem himself internally so he could face himself, but then he didn't need the A to
atone externally, all he had to do was confess unlike Hester who needed the A to atone
internally and externally. Hester relies on it to keep her emotions in balance and needs
it forever. The guilt that it has stitched into it has transformed all the emotional
distress that she doesn't want to deal with and get over into a tangible physical pain
and shame. Dimmesdale doesn't need it forever but the scars of his A will be there
forever on him. He only needed it to atone to himself. 
Dimmesdale and Hester both couldn't have been redeemed without suffering. In Dimmesdale's
case he needed to suffer internally to atone to himself and then confessing was easy for
him and even brought a smile to his face. In Hester's case she needed to suffer
physically to atone emotionally and by suffering on the outside she would relive her
internal pain of regret. 
Dimmesdale's method of atonement is more logical because he understood that first people
must admit they did wrong according to themselves and not just society's view of what's
right and atone to yourself, then atoning externally to relieve his conscience about
admitting to everyone who Pearl's father was. He died after confessing because he had
fully and purely forgiven himself, and had showed everyone that he was Pearl's father.
Hester's method was not practical because she ignored the fact that she must first atone
to herself. She couldn't handle emotional things and therefore she needed physical
evidence of pain, so she could atone internally but she was only tricking herself for
she'll never fully atone internally for she never let herself. She let the A do the
crying and the bleeding and so she may feel redeemed but she never really is because she
never actually faces herself about her sin. She shuts everything out and puts on the A
hoping that the letter will take the pain away.