Motivation

In the Scarlet Letter, characters in the story are mostly motivated by their feeling of guilt and sin. Hester is motivated to do charity work due to her sin of committing adultery. Bearing public humiliation by wearing a scarlet letter A on her chest, Hester wanted to show the kindness side of her by donation and actively participating in the community through charity. On the other hand, Dimmesdale is motivated to torture himself because of his guilt and being unable to confess. Dimmesdale whips himself and goes on fast because he wanted to simply punish himself for his evil acts. In Roger Chillingworth’s case, he is motivated by vengeance where he wanted to torment Dimmesdale for having an affair with his dear wife. Chillingworth is driven so bad by vengeance that eventually he loses his humanity and becomes a devil with a burning red eye.

        In “Burning down of our house”, Bradstreet is mainly motivated by her religious beliefs. She believes that the true treasure lies in heaven where earthly possessions are useless. Her puritan beliefs help her to withstand depression and sadness by allowing her to let go the feeling of losing a house. A person like me without strong puritan beliefs couldn’t have survived after losing something precious. For me, earthly possession is the most important thing in the world, without it, I’ll die.