Pearl Savagery

Words: 755
Pages: 4

As the story continues, Pearl’s interest in her mother’s sin continues to grow. This could be mirroring the build up to Hester and Arthur’s final and inevitable redemption. More carelessness and savagery can be seen in Pearl as well, which is unusual and ironic based on the serious predicaments the characters around her are in. After completing the story, the audience realizes that many incidents of her observations and awareness were not done out of coincidence, but were major plot points. The falling action of the story is filled with instances of final peace, death, success, and suffering. In many instances, Pearl can be observed making insightful assumptions and observations about her father, Arthur Dimmesdale. When she and Hester go the Governor’s Hall to meet with the leaders of the town, Pearl senses something about Dimmesdale and goes right up to him. “Pearl, that wild and flighty little elf, stole softly towards him, and, taking his hand in the grasp of her own, laid her cheek against …show more content…
“Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother’s side and was playing at her own will about the market-place. She made the somber crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray…”(216). Pearl can be likened to the “calm before the storm” that is to come after the procession. This is also the last shred of innocence that Pearl ever has, because after the reveal of Dimmesdale’s sin, she is transformed into a normal person because the “…spell was broken…”(226). In retrospect, her “deed was done” and the revelation was all that she needed to break the curse that her parents made for her. A theme of “negative actions affecting the lives of others along the way” is found throughout the story, because Pearl’s state of mind and being is the result of the sin that made her, and until the sin is fully confronted she cannot be who she is destined to