The qualities that Hester Prynne possesses shape her as a character. ... As Orson Scott Card remarks in Characters and Viewpoints, "The character story emerges when some part of a character's role in life becomes unbearable." (53). ... Nathaniel Hawthorne, through his curiosity of ancestral heritage, uses the history of Puritanism to create a character as dynamic as Hester Prynne, who acquires the conflict that happens as a result of the old Puritan laws. His beliefs are strictly transcendalist ideas, which contemporaries including Emerson and Melville both share with Hawthorne (Bradley 4...

• Word Count: 1429
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School