Book #4- The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne was a great book filled with great symbolism, dynamic characters, and engaging storyline. The only problem I encountered while reading was it was written in old English. But like Huck Finn, the accents and writing gave it a more realistic feel of being in a 17Th century Puritan community. I loved Hawthorne's use of symbolism especially the significance and symbolism of the scarlet letter. I also had fun seeing the character develop as the story progressed.
My favorite symbolism's used in The Scarlet Letter all represent the theme of what our choices can lead too. The first symbol I want to address is The prison and the rose bush in the first chapter. The prison represented what could happen to us if we take the road of a criminal. Our lives would be dark and gloomy like the prison. I interpretted tat the rose bush had two meanings. Either that love and kindness can save us from the brink and make us become a better person or it can lead to being pricked by the thorns leaving sorrow due to our bad choices. The other main symbol used in this book that should be addressed is the scarlet letter. At first, it stands for adulteress and is meant to bring sorrow and ridicule for her choice. In later chapters, I still affects Hester, but she sees the joy of the choice that brought her Pearl. Soon, She rises above the scarlet letter and has a new life with a purpose. Once she rips off the Scarlet letter in chapter 18, she finally forgives herself for that sin and wants to begin a new life. At the end of the book, the letter becomes not a burden to her and once she dies, the letter still is "Glowing ...of light gloomier than the shadow: 'On a Field, Sable, The letter A..." This I believes shows that her sin still lives on and is gloomy, so the main theme of the book, I believe, is We are all sinners and our sins will be gloomy unless we chose to forgive them and move on.
I absolutely loved analyzing the characters of this book. First we have Hester Prynne. She is a women who has sinned, but overcame the meaning of the letter and forgave her sin making a life for herself. That I view her as model of true perseverance. She lived with the ridicule and torments the townspeople targeted towards her, but through that she still became a better person. Then we have Chillingworth. He is fueled by revenge, but once he has one he has nothing to live for and dies. Chillingwirth's character can sort of be connected to the feud in Huck Finn. It shows revenge is pointless and can lead to devastating results. After him we have Dimmesdale. He slowly rotted away due to him concealing his sin, and once he revealed his secret, he died. His character shows what can happen if you hold your sin inside yourself and not tell anyone can have devastating results to your mind and your life. We also are presented to Pearl. She is so innocent, and not understanding why people do certain things. This shows the true innocence of a child, and maybe shows how other people are confused by other peoples actions. Finally, we have the townspeople of the Puritan community. They were harsh and cruel to Hester when she first got the Scarlet letter, but once Dimmesdale died, they realized "We are all sinners alike." In my opinion, I viewed their actions were inappropriate towards Hester. They should have let her deal with her sin on her own, not publicly humiliate her and sentence her to a life of ridicule. They should have looked inside themselves to see that they have sinned as well, and ask themselves would they want to be treated like that. This can be related to now a days. Teenagers can publicly humiliate the outcasts of their school, and they may not wonder if they would like to be treated like that, much like the townspeople. Overall these characters gave me an in site on how I should and shouldn't act and how I should and should not live.
The Scarlet Letter was a great book for me to interpret and analyze. It really helped that I have already read this book once, so I got a better in site into theme and symbolism then I did before. The characters development was easier to see as well as some of the events. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne really brought me into a story filled with drama, symbols, and characters to help convey themes of human sin.