Scarlet letter where is hester buried

Sherrie By: Sherrie. I got to visit her this week. Pain's grave is in the same cemetery mentioned in The Scarlet Letter, which ends with a description of Hester Prynne's grave: So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. Taken on November 8, Her adultery has become so much a part of her that she can't actually feel free unless she's doing penance by wearing that A.

The novel leaves us with a final picture of Hester and Dimmesdale's gravestone. They have been buried near one another but not directly next to each other. A motto carved on the headstone they share ensures that their punishment follows them even into death: "on a field, sable, the letter A, gules.

We could interpret this persistent A as a tragic final image. However, the fact that Hester and Dimmesdale can be buried near each other suggests that the community has, in many ways, forgiven them for their adultery. Even after death, the legend of their love continues. Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. Study Guide. The minister bids her farewell and dies. See Important Quotations Explained. In their absence, the story of the scarlet letter grows into a legend.

Many years later, Hester suddenly returns alone to live in the cottage and resumes her charity work. This third and final scaffold scene serves as a catharsis, as all unsettled matters are given resolution. Pearl acquires a father, Dimmesdale finally confesses, and Chillingworth definitively loses his chance for revenge. Moreover, despite the fact that the resolution takes place before the assembled townspeople, the Puritan elders have no power to judge or punish in this situation.

Instead, Dimmesdale serves as his own prosecutor and judge. He apparently wills his own death, thereby breaking away from Puritan morals. That is, if Dimmesdale is capable of such a sin, then surely every individual must be; perhaps sinfulness should be acknowledged as an inescapable element of the human condition.

However, no such reconsideration takes place. It is this latter group, which argues that Dimmesdale meant to deliver a lesson on sin and was not confessing to any actual wrongdoing, that reestablishes the old ways.

In their view, Dimmesdale meant to teach his parishioners that all men have the potential for evil, not that evil is a necessary part of man. Correspondingly, the conservatives believe, society need only renew its vigilance against evil rather than reconsider its very conception of evil. Even in his defiance, then, Dimmesdale is appropriated by the Puritan system as a means of reinforcing its pre established messages. However, this victory for the entrenched ways seems to be only temporary.