Plant Imagery Throughout the Scarlet Letter

Honors American Lit. B The carmine Letter Pathway stem 694 wordsApril 23, 2013 finishedout The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne uses vegetation resource in correlational statistics with his ideas about sinfulnessful nature and matinee idol. When describing the prison in the very extraction of the novel, Hawthorne writes, a spate-plot, much overgrown with such unsightly vegetation, which evidently pitch something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the grisly blossom of civilized troupe, a prison (45-46).Hawthorne uses the imagery of a down(p) peak to depict the sinful nature of humans as it was inevitable that nevertheless in this new flourishing society the people in that respect cut the need to build a prison. This vivid image also relates to the prudes harsh view on sin in the community. Throughout the novel Hawthorne frequently criticizes the Puritan society, this being another example, but the owner appeared already to have relinquished, as hopeless , the effort to perpetuate on this look of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the primal English taste for ornamental gardening (97).The description of the Governors ornamental garden shows the garden failing, as if the person caring for it had precondition up and realized that it was impossible to have the ornamental garden in Boston the way it was in England. This parallels Hawthornes beliefs about Puritan society in that their abstruse beliefs would not sustain in the new founding they were creating, for god is depicted through nature demonstrating how Hawthorne feels god is looking spile on the materialistic and frivolous ways of the Puritans.Later in the novel Chillingworth says, accordingly not, since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the apology of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to flummox manifest an unspoken crime? (119). Nature is being associated with god in this passage theref ore Hawthorne is saying that god calls for the confession of sin and goes on to say that god disapproves of a person that does not confess, thus the black weeds, mirroring sin, grow on the graves of those who cling to secrets.This idea is also perennial later in the novel, and all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried (130). Sin is again depicted as windlessness in this passage, for Dimmesdale has sinned, and not confessed therefore he is concerned that god leave alone reject him. Hawthorne clearly writes with a style of dark romanticism epitomized through his description of sin in the beginning of the novel as ghastly in every society.Hawthorne also reflects his religious views and those of his times period in the way he sees god and nature as one, similar to the ideas of Pantheism, a belief in the manifestation of god through n ature. Hawthorne frequently cogitate god to nature as seen when Hester calls to nature, as if calling to god, for pardonness, Thou shalt forgive me cried Hester, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him (175). While nature symbolizes sin, it also symbolizes the comforting and grant appearance of god.In relation to the bible, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white mans tread (178), the yellow leaves reference the leger Isaiah 4325, which reads, I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more displaying the tie between nature and god both practical application and forgetting sins also tying into Hawthornes religious perspective in his writing. Nathaniel Hawthorne articulates his views on sin and god through his use of vegetation imagery end-to-end the scarlet letter he continually uses dead and black imagery to allude to sin and secrets.His use of dead vegetation implies that he believes confession is th e relief of the burden of sin and the necessary action to obtain gods approval and forgiveness. Hawthorne also represents gods forgiveness through plant imagery connecting gods washing away of sin to the forest and nature washing away of sin. Fundamentally Hawthorne uses vegetation to choose his ideas on divinity and human sinful nature in The Scarlet Letter.