Symbolism In The Scarlet Letter. Symbolism Is The Use Of

The Puritans despised Hester and her symbol for her sin, and shunned her for many years even after her prison sentence. Hester could have just lived a depressed, lonely life in seclusion with her daughter Pearl, but she decided to accept her sin and wrong doing to become a mentally stronger woman. During the many years of Hester being in prison and being rejected when she was released, she practiced needlework to provide food for her and her daughter. As the people in Salem recognized her talent of her embroidery and garments, they began respecting her talent, and so the scarlet “A” that stood for “adulterer” slowly began to stand for “able.” Hester started to supply apparel for babies, ceremonies, inaugurations, and funerals. Furthermore, the Scarlet letter has another symbolic meaning. When Pearl went to the seashore, she made a green letter “A” out of seaweed – nature’s color. This was symbolic for Pearl’s sinless life so far because she hasn’t truly been introduced to sin; she still is “green” and “pure”. As for Hester, her scarlet “A” is symbolic of her many sins, for no one can avoid sin as they grow older.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, symbolsim is constantly present in the actual scarlet letter “A” as it is viewed as a symbol of sin and the gradally changes its meanign, guilt is also a mejore symbol, and Pearl’s role in this novel is symbolic as well. The Scarlet Letter includes many profound and crucial symbols. these devices of symbolism are best portayed in the novel, most noticably through the letter “A” best exemplifies the changes in the symbolic meaning throughout the novel.

There are many forms of symbolism found in The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne, the author uses his many forms of symbolism to project a lesson or moral created throughout the story. Even each of the main characters has a different moral representation. Guilt, repentance, purity, and strength each are shown through the eyes of a different character. Pear, Hester Prynne, Chillingworth, and Reverend Dimmesdale are main characters that are used to show that you should “Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”(Hawthorne286)

Within The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne uses symbolism, “the use of symbols to represent ideas” (Bell 10), affluently. The amount of symbolism Hawthorne uses could lead some to believe that The Scarlet Letter is in fact an allegory. Nearly every object in Hawthorne’s novel is symbolic. Hawthorne uses everyday objects and places to symbolize many main themes, concepts, and ideas in the lives of Hester and Pearl as well as multiple other main characters.

Symbolism is a literary style that uses symbols to represent ideas or qualities. Symbolism plays a very important part in The Scarlet Letter because it uses the characters to develop the main idea of the story. The symbols used by Nathaniel Hawthorne help the reader to visualize and understand the meaning of the story. Hawthorne uses Hester Prynne, Pearl, and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale as symbols throughout the book. They are the main characters of the story and they all overcome some difficulties by the end. The lives of the characters help to serve as symbols of the Puritan religion that existed during this time.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer in the 1800s, an anti-transcendentalist, and the great-nephew of John Hathorne, a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne is obsessed with Puritanism and, due to being obsessed, bases all his writings on Puritan towns. All of his stories take place in New England in the 1600s, before the Salem Witch Trials; The Scarlet Letter is one of these stories. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of the Wild Rosebush, Hester’s Cabin, and the sunlight and the forest to contribute to the overall theme of imperfection.

God, the most fearful and powerful presence for almost all people and all religions, used shaming as a way to inflict this sort of fear and obedience in people so that they may never do such things as others have (Deuteronomy 13:11). However, we must not forget that the miscreant itself plays a major role. For example, Hester Prynne, a young and beautiful woman in 17th century America, commits the crime of adultery. She is forced to wear a scarlet “A” for the rest of her life. Hester becomes a walking example of both good and bad. Her scarlet A was a “passport” into other places people dared not adventure; her scarlet A teaches her how to be strong and to do good with all the bad she may or may not receive as consequences of her actions (Hawthorne 155). The scarlet A was the majority of Hester’s public punishment. She quickly becomes isolated and desolate from the community in many aspects. James Cox states that the purpose for a public punishment was to simply shame and embarrass the miscreant and to teach them a lesson so that they may be able to integrate themselves back into the community (Cox). Further along in The Scarlet Letter, readers learn that Hester devotes her life to changing how the community views her scarlet letter, and achieves this through the good she does in return for almost absolutely nothing but

      Throughout his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne reveals character through the use of imagery and metaphor.

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne uses many forms of symbolism in his book The Scarlet Letter. Symbolism is, according to Merriam-Webster, “the art or practice of using symbols, especially by investing things with a symbolic meaning or by expressing the invisible or intangible by means of visual or sensuous representations.” This means that the author was using objects to represent an action or idea. The symbols used in his book is either all physical or visible objects. Many of the symbols in the book are about characters.Nathaniel’s ideas came from his bonds with the Puritans. According to CliffsNotes, “the Puritans had great difficulty in loving the sinner and hating the sin”. With the Puritans strong hatred for sin,

The Scarlet Letter takes place at the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 17th century, this is where the Puritans settled after leaving the New World because they wanted to “purify” the Church of England. The Puritans were a sect of Protestant Christians influenced by Calvinism, the idealized that salvation is predestined. They believed that religious behavior was a result of salvation, so with the Puritan communities so invested in purity sins were punished harshly and removed. Hawthorne sets the scene of the first chapter with a dark and gloomy effect, the dark nature of the prison established in the “vicinity of Cornhill”, by early settlers. The prison describe as an “ugly edifice” and “black flower of civilized society” with weeds growing in front of the shadowy structure where groups of Puritans dressed in there normal boring clothes have gathered. A rose bush stands beside the weeds, it foreshadows that brightness may be found along the track, or it eases the darkening close.

The Scarlet Letter contains plenty of symbolism in itself. Hawthorne has filled every page with deeper meanings and not always a thorough explanation. Almost everything is a metaphor, even the smallest things that anyone could think of.

Symbolism has many different meanings, and the Scarlet ‘A’ in “The Scarlet Letter” has many different meanings as well. Hester Prynne is the main character who is forced to wear the scarlet letter as remembrance for the crime and the sin that she has committed. This letter completely ruined her reputation in her community. How could a small piece of fabric do so much harm? This letter was a representation of something much greater than the letter ‘A’. This letter was originally made to stand for adulteress, as physical reminder of her sins. The vibrant scarlet red is meant to shame Hester, to make her feel sorry for her mistakes. Most importantly it was a symbol for change and an emblem of identity. In short, the scarlet letter meant much more than a letter of shame, it was simply a piece of fabric with meaning that could easily change.

Symbols unlock the secrets of a story. Hawthorne, in The Scarlet Letter, uses many symbols to represent different things. Some symbols represent the same thing. The letter “A” has many meanings, each character has their own meanings, and even the different parts of nature are symbols. Also, apart from providing structure for the novel, each scaffold scene conveys something different. One could say, arguably, that nearly everything in The Scarlet Letter is a symbol for something else.

In the beginning of the novel, when Hester’s sin was like a fresh gaping wound, she is made out to be the scapegoat of society. Hester receives the punishment of public embarrassment at the scaffold and wearing the scarlet letter A on her bosom. Many in the community see this punishment as just a slap on the wrist, some even suggesting that her sin be punishable by death. The novel reads, “ ‘At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead’... ‘This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die’” (Hawthorne 36). The community is obsessed with sin,those who commit sins, and the punishment they should receive.