The concept of redemption is popular in literature. Perhaps the first story of redemption is the story of the prodigal son. It comes from the New Testament, and it is the story of two brothers. The older brother is obedient and hard-working; the other leaves the family home, squanders his father’s fortune, and is forced to return home to beg his father for mercy.
Acknowledging his son’s return as some sort of resurrection, the father calls for a grand celebration. The older brother is frustrated that he has been a good son all these years and has never received such gifts, and goes to his father to complain about the injustice. His father explains that because the youngest son was lost, he was found later, which is cause for celebration. The parable celebrates acts of forgiveness and redemption and has served as the inspiration for many plays, short stories, novels, and even movies (a good fact to remember for the AP English Literature exam).
About such a story is The Crucible. While most people know Arthur Miller’s play on the Salem witch trials as a commentary on the cruelty and injustice of the McCarthy era and the Black List, it is also the story of a married couple. John and Elizabeth Proctor begin the play unhappy with each other. John has been having an affair with the couple’s former house helper, Abigail Williams, and Elizabeth can’t forgive him. However, by the end of the play, Elizabeth is able to recognize that her failings as a wife may have led to John’s affair and offers him the forgiveness that she has been withholding. This act of forgiveness allows John to peacefully accept the death sentence that has been wrongfully imposed on him.
The kind of redemption that John Proctor finds in The Crucible is strange. He does not save him from being hanged, but allows him to go to the gallows with a clear conscience, having “your goodness from him now” and presumably believing that he will go to heaven after death. Somehow the injustice of his death sentence seems to lessen because he and Elizabeth are at peace with themselves and with each other.
It’s a similar kind of mixed redemption that comes at the end of The Scarlet Letter. Like John Proctor, Hester Prynne is guilty of infidelity, but she is forced to use her shame literally, in the form of a red letter “A” for “adulterer.” Hester bears her punishment with dignified humility and never reveals the name of her lover, even though they conceived a child together. Finally, her lover confesses her sin to the town and dies soon after. Although Hester is able to reconcile somewhat with her husband (he leaves her entire inheritance to her illegitimate daughter), she is forced to wear the scarlet letter even after her death; she appears on her tombstone.
Although neither story has the kind of cathartic (if somewhat confusing) ending of the parable of the prodigal son, there is a common message: the redemption one can find in others can never be as liberating as the redemption one achieves by forgiving oneself. Likewise. .