Misery

I love to read old, classic books, like The Scarlet Letter or Jane Eyre, but I’ve noticed that so many of them build up such wonderful characters and then have something horrible happen to them or have completely unsatisfying endings. Why was it so popular in old times to kill your protagonist? Sometimes it makes the story that much more meaningful, like in Romeo and Juliet, but other times, like in The Scarlet Letter, it just leaves you feeling like the whole thing was pointless. I’m sure that authors did their best to try and teach a lesson with the conclusion to their story, but when it is weak, it kills the whole novel.

            At the end of The Scarlet Letter, I felt that Hawthorne was just trying to end things as fast as possible. Instead of going through with Hester and Dimmesdale’s escape back to England, he makes them stay and has Dimmesdale’s weakness come back and kill him. It especially made me feel like I was wasting my time when Hester asked Dimmesdale if they could be together in death. He responds:

 “The law we broke! – the sin here so awfully revealed! – let these alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot our God – when we violated our reverence each for the other’s soul – it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in everlasting and pure reunion” (252).

I don’t understand why, if someone was dying, they would further crush the heart of the one who loves them by saying that they will never see each other again.

One may say that they are trying to free their lover, but since Hester has loved Dimmesdale for over seven years without even speaking to him, it doesn’t appear that she is going to get over him anytime soon. Telling her that they will never be together in the afterlife is just going to make her more miserable after his death.