Hester And Dimmesdale example essay topic

Idiots! Either Joffe and / or Stewart we " re idiots, or they thought their audience idiots who would neither appreciate nor understand the gloomy, pessimistic and disheartening hard classic of Hawthorne. Joffe and Stewart insist on lightening up a book defined by its doleful darkness, and the resulting film carries incongruously cheery messages: "Be true to your own heart, speak your mind, don't bother about what other folks say and everything will work out for the best. The filmmakers are determined to make THE SCARLET LETTER the story of a great love that overcomes all obstacles". (McDonagh) Living up to their declaration of "freely adapted from the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne", they change both characters and theme as proponent to please the audience and make money. The need to overtly adapt the novel lies in the idea that average person paying to see the movie hasn't read the book.

Its tone is unavoidably optimistic and allows none the political, social and cultural message of Hawthorne to be revealed. The point in the adaptation is lost in its adulterous adaptation". -- It tells the story of Hester Prynne, who sleeps with her minister, has his child and bears her shame alone, refusing to name her partner in sin. Shunned by Puritan society and tormented by her husband -- who's presumed dead, but returns and assumes a false name so he can ferret out her lover's identity -- Hester endures through sheer strength of will. It all ends sadly". (McDonagh) As Pearl, Dimmesdale and Hester ride off, into a new and better life, the scarlet A is dropped and all is seemed to be history with no bearing on tomorrow.

It is the perfect example of a happily ever after. If only that is what Hawthorne had intended. The ending is probably the farthest stray from the novel, besides the characters themselves, because the filmmakers choose to have the very dreams of what Hester and Dimmesdale had hoped in the novel to come true. In the novel Dimmesdale dies, and Hester and Pearl are left alone. Adultery isn't marred with tainted nature of sin, and due to this to have a mother and child punished would not sit well with paying viewers. The characters basic attitudes and motives is the one sacred thing to an adaptation.

It is what allows the connection between the novel and movie to happen. As Rita Kempsey comments, "Give them MOBY DICK and they'd make FREE WILLY". Implying that the basic concepts in characters, theme and tone have been violated that a new idea has been formed and in order to escape plagiarism charges the tack on the phrase, "freely adapted". The character of Hester and her tragedy in Hawthorne's eyes is that "she abases herself for a coward, a man whose conspicuous piety gives him an excuse to let her suffer in his stead. Joffe's Hester is persecuted because people are mean and don't understand her free-spirited nature; her lover is silently devoted, always true to her in his heart".

(McDonagh) Maitland McDonagh web.