Analysis Of The Book ' The Scarlet Letter '

In chapters 9-15 of The Scarlet Letter, the author decides to dedicate an entire chapter to each character. For example, on chapter 9, the chapter is dedicated to what happens with Roger. Roger becomes friends with Arthur Dimmesdale in chapter 9. Dimmesdale is sick, and he thinks Roger is kind and suspects nothing. But Roger, who is Arthur's personal physician, begins to suspect that Dimmesdale is hiding something from him. At this part of the book, we don't know what the author plans for Dimmesdale to hide, if he even is hiding anything at all.

In his book, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells of a story where a young woman has had an adulterous relationship with a respected priest in a Puritan community. Typical of Hawthorne's writings is the use of imagery and symbolism. In Chapter 12, The Minister's Vigil, there are several uses of imagery when Dimmesdale, the priest, is battling with confessing his sin, which has plagued him for seven years. Three evident techniques used to personify symbolism in this chapter are the use of darkness versus light, the use of inner guilt versus confession, and lastly the use of colors (black versus white).

1. As the story opens a throng is gathered.  Who are these people?  Where and why are they gathered?

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a brilliant writer of the 19th century. Hawthorne created a novel that reflected the time period of the Puritans in New England. The Scarlet Letter contains a representation of the people during that time period but can also be related to the reader’s time period. Originally, God created the world with complete perfection until man fell, and sin entered the world. In the eyes of God, a sin is a sin. There is no worse sin that one can commit. Man is the one that decided that one sin could be more harshly judged than another. Hawthorne uses the theme of sin to show the importance of one’s faith and conviction and how those principles relate to fallen sinners.

The characters in the Scarlet Letter are judged greatly through how and who they are able and unable to forgive. Such as the main female lead, Hester Prynne, and her struggle for the town to forgive her, finding the will to forgive herself and having God forgive her. Although, this was hard because every day she had to live with the scarlet letter upon her chest as a reminder of her sin. Another character that had one of the roughest times in the novel was Arthur Dimmesdale. This man kept a sin hidden for most of the novel and let it eat him away. The person that Dimmesdale needed to forgivehim the most was Pearl. He spent most of the novel trying to earn her beloved trust. Pearl would ask him favors to go into town with her but it

Throughout, “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne is able to enhance the plot by intricately incorporating symbols which represent a deeper meaning. One of which, is the infamous, and ambiguous, scarlet letter that lays upon the bosom of Hester Prynne. In the beginning of the book, the audience is immediately introduced to the scarlet letter as a symbol of shame and adultery. The narrator describes the Puritan society as very judgemental and harsh. Comments like, “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die,” creates this negative and unwelcoming atmosphere which surrounds Hester for a majority of the book. From then on, the Puritans constantly refer to the

In a novel that revolves almost solely around sin, the consequences of said sin, and redemption, there is no greater sin than that of revenge. No character in The Scarlet Letter is free of sin, but all gain some sort of redemption, save one Roger Chillingworth, who is arguably the greatest sinner of them all. Hester Prynne may have committed adultery, and Arthur Dimmesdale may have also committed adultery with Hester (as a priest, no less), but sins of passion are not the same as sins of vengeance and anger. These sins of revenge and madness are what Chillingworth is guilty of, ultimately making him the worst sinner in the entire book.

The second scene of the scarlet letter is about Hester Prynne, a young women that committed adultery, becomes the center of attention by being publicly placed upon a scaffold for all the eyes of the town to view and criticize. Hester is a beautiful lady with a magnificent completion, but all of this has been overlooked because of

Purpose is something every writer must think about in their work. With purpose a book becomes meaningful. Obviously Hawthorne has thought through his purpose of the expose of The Scarlet Letter. In enforcing onto the reader through dark diction, candid and callous tones, and descriptive imagery Hawthorne has established a complex mood within the setting and Hester's characterization which were his purposes he conveyed in the first

In the first Chapter of The Scarlet Letter, "The Prison-Door", the reader is immediately introduced to the people of Puritan Boston. Hawthorne begins to develop the character of the common people in order to build the mood of the story. The first sentence begins, "A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes" (Hawthorne

In chapter nineteen of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses a shift images with melancholic undertones in the beginning to multiple hope-filled images of Hester's life with Dimmesdale and Pearl. Hawthorne uses the tone shift to draw attention to the progression of not only the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale and Hester's overall perception of herself and her past actions. Hawthorne employs the shift of diction and imagery to further illustrate how complex Hester's character is and supports his overall message to his readers that women are complex and therefore should not be susceptible to hasty generalizations and condemnation. As chapter nineteen progresses the scenery surrounding the family, becomes an indication of the acts proceeding

In the stories of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the antagonist characters display parallel story lines through their searches for the enemy. Roger Chillingworth, the former husband of Hester Prynne and the antagonist of The Scarlet Letter, works against his wife in order to find her untold second lover. Frankenstein is a contrasting story in which an unnamed monster is the antagonist towards his human creator, Dr. Frankenstein. Yet despite quite different story lines, the two characters possess traits that exibit parallels between them. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth displays the startling passionate characteristics of an unwavering drive to seek out his foe, madness as his focus on his search takes over his entire being, and terrible anguish when his task is unexpectedly over, all of which are reflected in the daemon created at the hand of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein.

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.” (23)-Nameless narrator’s narration

The Scarlet Letter was written in the historical setting of 1600s Puritan society. Anti-Transcendentalist author, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes about the failed Utopian society that Puritans believed was created. Hawthorne did not share the same beliefs of Puritans. He interpreted the meaning of this book, by using a woman and her crime of adultery to reveal the hypocrisy of life in the Puritan society. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne used the symbolic meaning of the Wild Rosebush, Hester’s Cabin, The Forest and Sunlight to contribute to the overall theme of imperfection.

The Scarlet Letter Critical Analysis Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, the direct descendant of John Hawthorne, and a judge at the infamous Salemwitchcraft trials. The guilt that Hawthorne felt over the actions of his ancestor had an enormous impact on his writings. In his introduction of "The Scarlet Letter", Hawthorne accepts the guilt from his forefathers and offers to repent for their crimes (Waggoner, 5). This unusual way of viewing guilt and sin is one driving factor in Hawthorne's writing. The other, which is closely related to the first, is the relationship between men, and of man to humanity as a whole.