Scarlet Letter Chapter 20-24 Questions and Answers

What is the significance of the scarlet letter A which is embroidered on Hester’s gown?

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).

The settings in The Scarlet Letter are very important in displaying the themes of the novel. The settings in this novel are almost characters, for they are an important part in developing the story. The scaffold, the forest, the prison, and Hester’s cottage are settings that show sin and its consequences result in shame and suffering.

English Protestants created a large group of people in the 16th and 17th centuries called the Puritans. These people advocated strict religious discipline along with a strong beliefs and worshipping. The Scarlet Letter reflected on Puritan Society in several ways, from religion to discipline and punishment. Religion seemed to control everyone, the reverend was the person that everyone looked up to, and the community, as a whole, believed in fate and destiny. Puritan relationships were very restricted, therefore making adultery a terrible sin in the eyes of the community. In the 17th century, Boston was extremely strict and the laws were strongly enforced, making Hester’s sin a great

In Nathaniel Hawethorne’s The Scarlet Letter, five scenes stand above the rest in the entirety of the book. Each of these scenes focusing on one of the main characters, Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, who’s real name has never been revealed. In order of occurrence, the scenes which have been deemed most important include, Hester on the scaffold holding Pearl as an infant, and Roger Chillingworth visiting Hester while she is still in the prison being two examples. Another being what many would consider the climax of story is when Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in the darkness. The final two being Dimmesdale and Hester’s meeting in the forest, and the day upon which Arthur confesses his sins and passes on. Though these are all strictly opinion, they are key points in the novel.

               The fact that Dimmesdale is a hypocrite causes him to experience increased torment due to his guilt.  Dimmesdale beautifully illustrates Hawthorne’s point, because if he were not such a highly religious man, then he would not care about his crime.  However, he does care, and he inflicts torment on himself, including long periods of fasting. In addition to hours of staring at himself in the mirror, he could also be caught numerous times in his closet, whipping himself and burning the letter "A" on his chest.   Or he could be seen at the scaffold in the wee hours of the morning, practicing how he is going to confess the next day. Deluding himself by pretending that his

I believe that Hester returns to Boston because, chooses to settle in an abandoned cabin on the edge of town, where she serves as an

Some could say that the Minister is the greatest sufferer because he always has the leech attached to him sucking his life from him. Minister Dimmesdale beckoning for Hester and Pearl to stand with him,“‘Ye have both been here before, but I was not with you. Come hither once again, and we will stand all three together!’”(181). Dimmesdale is so depressed that he wants to stand with Hester and Pearl on the town scaffold in the dark where no

The physical state of Reverend Dimmesdale mirrors the deterioration of Dimmesdale’s mental and moral state because of the guilt related to a lack of public confession.

        In reality, the Scarlet Letter is many things. It has all the characteristics of a modern-day soap opera, but it is way more than some television show cast on ABC. It could be a sermon being shouted from a church attendee, but no; the Puritans are surely not the heroes in this novel. It could be a story of failure, for there are many failures cast upon the main characters, or it could be a story of revenge from an angry husband. And, maybe it could even be a story of creativity-- the attempt of one to see their artistic side in a community who disapproves a mind of imagination. The novel could mean a multitude of things, only noticed

The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a novel that takes place in the town of Boston, Massachusetts in 1642. Hester Prynne, the main character of the story, commits the sin of adultery. Because of this sin, she is "blessed" with a child named Pearl. Her punishment is to wear a scarlet letter “A" on her chest for the rest of her life, which affects the way the townspeople look and act around her. Also, she must stand on the scaffold in the town for three hours for the whole town to recognize her grave sins. The man who should be standing upon the scaffold along with her and Pearl is the town minister, Dimmesdale. He is presented as a weak character because of his fear of losing his beloved reputation as such a holy

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.

After Hester is released from prison Hawthorne leaves us wondering if her choice to stay in Boston was even a choice she could make. Chapter five opens with Hester coming into the light and leaving the cell in which she had been punished in for so long. However, once she is out, she decides to stay in Massachusetts, in the same community which has shamed her for so long. Hawthorne describes the decision when he writes, “it may seem marvelous, that this woman should still call that place her home… But there is a fatality… which almost invariably compels human beings to linger … the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime” (71). In this quote Hawthorne is not only speaking of Hester, he is speaking of

“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