Forms And Symbolism In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter

In the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, the letter is understood as a label of punishment and sin being publicized. Hester Prynne bears the label of “A” signifining adulterer upon her chest. Because of this scorching red color label she becomes

If it is important, it is remembered. If it has any value, it will last far into the future, if not forever. This is why Michelangelo’s David, the Mona Lisa, the automobile, The Beatles, and Pride and Prejudice are all remembered. If it is the first to make an impact, it becomes important. That is when it will affect people in future generations. For example, the Model T is not produced anymore, but is the grandfather of almost every car made today, affecting jobs, businesses, people, and the world. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is taught today because it was one of the first important American written novels that contained obvious symbolism. Since symbolism is used in everything of literary merit, it is important to see where it started. In the same way, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has lasted through the years and still be prevalent today. This is achieved in the original books and continuing in spin offs and adaptations.

The Puritan era in New England was inundated with an atmosphere of righteousness and judgment. This culture spurned those who strayed from its religious codes. In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses multiple symbols to bring a deeper meaning to the society, his characters, and to adultery. One of the motifs used comes as the character Pearl, the daughter of the two adulterers. Pearl has multiple descriptions; physically, she is “a lovely and immortal flower,” yet also “an airy sprite . . . as if she were hovering in the air and might vanish” (80, 83). She has a “wild, desperate, defiant mood” and is often referred to as a “flower,” a “bird,” and an “elf” (82, 80, 98, 87). Hawthorne uses Pearl’s multi-layered personality

In the nineteenth century novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes different origins of allusions and archetypes to emphasize how individuals in order to encourage individuals to forgive sins and work towards redemption.

In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale committed adultery. The Puritans decided that God’s judgment was not enough for Hester, and therefore, she needed to be humiliated and isolated from everyone in that town. Christians are called to bring people to God not condemn. “Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive” (Hawthorne 557). The sin committed by Hester and Dimmesdale was a sin of passion. A sin of passion is a sin that is committed in the moment. Hawthorne develops his whole novel around the sin of these two people. With every sin committed, there are consequences that follow. Hawthorne uses this sin to show how consequences affect those directly involved and those that are not. It is true

It was not just Pearl’s aggressive, imaginative form of play that got her in trouble; Pearl was a bad, misbehaved child. Pearl “lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules” (page 74). Pearl was an outcast, along with her mother. She did not fit in with the community. How could she fit into a community that valued order over everything else? Pearl “who was a dauntless child” (page 83) did not even act like the other children. “After frowning, stamping her and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies,” (page 83).

Symbolism is a common approach used in writing, but it is not to be taken for its exact connotation. In literature, the symbol can be a person, item, circumstance, or action that has a more profound significance in the writing. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne there are four main symbols that the reader would notice. The symbols include, the colors red and black, the meteor, Pearl, and the scarlet letter itself. Hawthorne uses symbolism in the novel to communicate his message.

Historically, Puritanism was a popular way of life, playing a major role in English history during the first half of the 17th century. Back in that time a man named Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a well known writer, had a history of creating stories about Puritan society. Although he wrote about the Puritans, he most certainly did not favor them, and this has become obvious throughout the storyline. In the uptight and dismal culture that Hawthorne paints for us in The Scarlet Letter, his distaste, annoyance, and utter hostility towards the Puritans in this time exemplify Hawthorne’s use of diction and symbols to persuade readers to dislike Puritans and their culture.

Webster defined "symbol" with these words: "Something concrete that represents or suggests another thing that cannot in itself be pictured." This concept has been particularly applied to literature and used by writers throughout history. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter uses multitudes of symbols in such a manner. One of the most prominent, and most complicated, of such symbols is the scarlet letter "A". The scarlet letter "A" is a symbol of a daughter's connection to her mother, isolation, and the devil and its associations.

In the story, Hester prynne had committed adultery with Dimmesdale, and had created a life from that sin named Pearl. The punishment of adultery was to wear a scarlet letter A, and stand on a scaffold in front of everyone. Although everyone thought the scarlet letter A represented angel, it represented a deep and dark sin. When Hester first starts wearing the letter A, she doesn't let it dictate

The main character in The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, emerged from the gloom of this dark society's punishment. For her crime of adultery, she faced the most commonly used punishment—public humiliation. Although this involved no physical harm, its use in such a proper society brought ridicule and shame paralleling a punishment as harsh as death itself. Hester stood amidst the crowd for three tortuous hours, struggling to withstand the burning glares of the townspeople feeling, "as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once." (40). This display was made even more severe because she was also sentenced "to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom," the letter "A", for the rest of her life (43). The scarlet symbol for adultery branded Hester as a sinner to others, and when she was alone it burned like fire into her innermost heart to remind her of the life-shattering punishment society sentenced her for a single sin.

Symbolism of The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter is a novel full of love, hate, mystery, drama, grief, sin and revenge, all of which happens in today’s day and age, but the author explains how these emotions were dealt with in a different time period. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written in 1850, but the time period in the book is the 17th century, in Boston. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne uses the symbols of light and dark to depict good and evil among the characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.

One of the most obvious and insidious symbols that Nathaniel Hawthorne includes, hence the name “The Scarlet Letter”, is the scarlet letter “A” that is placed upon Hester’s chest. However, the majority of symbolism that Hawthorne includes, is not as prominent as that of the scarlet letter. Hawthorne includes a copious amount of symbolic meanings in his famous novel The Scarlet Letter that gives each chapter a deeper meaning.

The reason that she was being punished for adulterer was because she had sex with Dimmesdale after the separation of her and her Husband Chillingworth. However the Scarlet Letter ended up turning out to be a power symbol for Hester meaning “Able”. The Novel seems to show plenty of good and evil just as the bible did with Adam and Eve. Just now with the status of Scarlet Letter A was pose to be a success to making Hester feel shameful due to the sin she committed. Nevertheless, Hester was suffering due to the fact that she had to wear the scarlet letter A

There are very few things that seperate Pearl from the letter from each other except of course the obvious fact that one is simply an object, and one is living. At one point the narrator describes Pearl as "the scarlet letter endowed with life." this quote is very significant when the reader conciders this unique relationship.