Can Unconfessed sins destroy the Soul?

Essay by browneyedbabydollHigh School, 11th gradeA+, September 2003

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Which is worse to take a crime and hide it from the world or to confess it openly unto the world and take the consequences good or bad? Does the guilt eat away at you and you eventually tell anyway or not? If so why tell to begin with? In the opinion of the author, I think that it is worse to take internal punishment than external because external eventually will deteriorate, unlike internal that will stay hidden with you until your grave unless you break down so much it is no longer to hide you secret any longer.

My theory is supported in a very good example that takes place in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Two of the main characters in the novel commit adultery together. One of them is a woman named Hester Prynne who bears a child from this sin. Hester automatically confessed her crime and for that she went through and earthly punishment assigned by the leaders of the colony of Massachusetts.

She was assigned to wear a scarlet letter on her breast for the rest of her natural life which she embroidered with gold thread; another one of her punishments forced her to stand upon a scaffold for three hours and be a public mockery. Afterwards she becomes alienated from the rest of the citizens of Boston. The second is a man named Arthur Dimmesdale who is a Pastor to the puritan settlers. He to is also punished, although his punishment is seen in the world as some form of illness instead of alienation. Mr. Dimmesdale refuses to come forward and confess that he is the fellow-sinner along with Hester, and he takes that secret and hides it in the inner most part of his soul. Gradually as time passes his face turns...