Scarlet Letter By Hawthorne Appreciation
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Scarlet Letter By Hawthorne Appreciation
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is considered to be one of
the greatest examples of true American literature. Its excellency of topic,
characterization, and description has made it a permanent part of our history.
Set in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s, it describes the life of Hester Prynne,
a Puritan woman whose existence is marred by sin. The real genius of the book is
found in its description. Hawthorne makes allusion, symbolism, and romanticism
work toward one effect, making the reader feel as if she was there, watching it
all happen, living through Hester's struggle. The story opens as a woman, Hester
Prynne, is leaving a jail and heading toward a large scaffold in the middle of
Salem town, where she, along with her newborn child, Pearl, is put on display as
an example to all the people, to discourage them from committing such a sin as
adultery. The sentence is given by a number of priests who feel compassion for
her because her husband had been thought dead for so many years. She is ordered
to wear a scarlet letter, "A" for adultery, on her breast for the
duration of her stay in Salem. She is perversely unwilling to leave the place of
her shame and outcast when she could easily have sailed away to England or to
anywhere else on earth and been rid of her "mark of Cain." At the
scaffold, she sees her husband, just arrived from Indian imprisonment, standing
in the crowd. He, naturally, is enraged by news of her unfaithfulness to him and
to his memory, but carries it too far when he renames himself Roger
Chillingworth and begins slowly to dismantle the sanity of her lover, the
Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale. Disguised as an apothecary, Chillingworth dwells
with Dimmesdale, supposedly to maintain his health, but really to sap his
strength and to serve as a reminder of the young reverend's sin. During the
seven-year duration of the book, Hester becomes steadily stronger because of her
mark, while Dimmesdale, forced to bear his brand internally, becomes very much
incapacitated, both mentally and physically. The face he puts on for public
approval and the one he wears while he is alone are so completely different that
they nearly drive him insane. He is harder on himself for committing the sin
than many a court of the time would have been, and it tears him apart. One day,
he meets Hester and Pearl while walking through the woods and, after talking for
a short while, they decide to leave Salem, ...
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