The Scarlet Letter

A detailed Summary of The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, is a book about the goods and evils of mankind. Hawthorne believed that every person is composed largely by good or evil and partially by the opposite. The Scarlet Letter discusses the lives of four related persons living in a small Puritan town. The four people are Hester Prynne, Rev. Dimmesdale, Robert Chillingworth, and Pearl. Each has committed his/her own sin, but all have also committed good deeds. Hester has committed adultery, Dimmesdale has committed hypocrisy, Chillingworth yearns for revenge, and little Pearl is rude and disrespectful.

The setting for this book is placed in a small Puritan town. The town is very gloomy and gray. There is basically no color at all. The only color is the scarlet letter on Hester's breast, pearl's clothes, and the rose bush near the jail. The atmosphere is very tense and strict. The simplest things are taken very seriously, and sins are taken extremely seriously. Hawthorne uses regionalism to help the reader get a better sense of the mentality of the people back then. He does this by putting the dialogue in the native puritan tongue and using imagery to describe their dress and style of living.

Naturally, my favorite character was Hester. Hester is not only a symbol for women that time, but for modern women as well. Her constant strength and courage is an inspiration to all women. Like Hester, there are many women today who are single mothers, and similar to Hester they are often ridiculed and talked about, but rarely asked about the child's father. Even though time has passed, the mentalities stay the same. Men are almost always pardoned for their wrongs but women are put to shame. Men who commit adultery are known by suave names such as, Casanova and lady's man, whereas the names for promiscuous women are not as pleasant. Through all her turmoil, Hester remains strong.

Color is another theme in the book. The town is very dark and gloomy, and the atmosphere is very strict, tense, and melancholy. The colors in the town were mostly grays and blacks. Only when Hester went out, the town became sunny and bright, which symbolized the good she brought to the town. The rose bush surrounded with weeds, near the jail symbolized Hester and Pearl surrounded by the community. This showed that Hester and Pearl brought something good to a lot of bad.

Pearl was another character that interested me. Her sweet and sour character was another symbol of the scarlet letter. Just as the letter symbolized good, Pearl was sweet, and the bad, which was her rudeness, was the sour.

This was a great book. There were many other topics that I would have liked to expand on but could not. I think that Hawthorne's use of imagery and regionalism to describe the fictional setting and characters, so that they seemed realistic, made this book especially good.

Also, she was thought to be elf-child and possess a demon spirit, but other than her rudeness, never did anything to make them suspect such a thing.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1249
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English