Symbols and Symbolism - Pearl as Living Symbol in The Scarlet Letter :: Scarlet Letter essays

Pearl as Living Symbol in The Scarlet Letter Pearl. A nestling born of sin. Conceived by lust. Created by impurity. As the result of her parents fall from grace, she represents the iniquity of their act, and is a continual tool for the recollection of their dubious deed. Sent, was she, from the Almighty perfection as a gift, and a burden of the heart. God gave me the child? cried she. He gave her in salary of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness- she is my torture, none the less See ye not, she is the flushed letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a meg fold the power of retribution for my sin? Ye shall not take her I will die first(109) There is truth in what she says, began the minister, with a go sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall reechoed, and the hollow armor rang with it - truth in what Hester says, and in the feeling which inspires her(110)... I must be even so, resumed the minister. This child of its fathers guilt and its mothers ruth hath come from the hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her. It was meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution too a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the thick of a troubled joy Hath she not expressed this thought with the decorate of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her pith?(110-111). Pearls gestures, and the essence which her presence pours forth, insinuate to the childs evil roots and the effect in that location of. the child could not be made amenable to rules. In expectant her existence, a great law had been broken, and the result was a being whose elements where perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder.... Above all, the warfare of Hesters spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated i n Pearl. She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the