LITERATURE ANALYSIS #2

1) The Scarlet Letter starts with a nameless narrator who lived in a customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. he discovered many documents, and found the scarlet A.” The manuscript had events that happened two hundred years before.  He writes a fake story about what he thought happens.  The story begins Boston. A Puritan settlement. Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her  daughter, Pearl and the scarlet letter “A” on her chest. She is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband sent her to America, but he never arrived in Boston. It was guessed he was lost at sea. Hester  had an affair hence the baby. She doesn't reveal her lover and the scarlet letter, with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. Hester’s missing husband is in the crowd,  and calls himself Roger Chillingworth and is a doctor now. He reveals his true identity to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass, shunned by the community. Officials try to take Pearl away from Hester, but Arthur Dimmesdale, a young minister, helps them stay together. Dimmesdale is very sick. Chillingworth helps him and eventually moves in with him so he can always help him. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between him and Hester so he tests Dimmesdale. While the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark on his chest which is an A. Hester earns her way back into society. One night Hester and pearl find Dimmesdale trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester, pearl and Dimmesdale link hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request to acknowledge her publicly and Hester can see him getting worse. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop but Chillingworth refuses. Hester meets with Dimmesdale because Chillingworth plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. They decide to go to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday and Dimmesdale preaches. Hester learns that Chillingworth knows of their plan and he booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale goes with Hester and Pearl and confesses publicly, showing his scarlet letter seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead like W T F. Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Years later, Hester returns alone still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own. Hester dies and is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone with a scarlet “A.”

2) Sin results in expulsion and suffering but also knowledge. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. Puritan society is extremely strict but Hester and Dimmesdale’s experience shows that a state of sinfulness can lead to personal growth, sympathy, and understanding of others. Running away or removing the letter would be an acknowledgment of society’s power over Hester. Instead refiguring the scarlet letter as a symbol of her own experiences and character. Her past sin is a part of who she is; to pretend that it never happened would mean denying a part of herself. Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the community’s minister, he is more symbol than human being. Dimmesdale never fully recognizes the truth of what Hester has learned: that individuality and strength are gained by quiet self-assertion and by a reconfiguration, not a rejection, of one’s assigned identity.

3) I think Hawthorne's tone for the book was admiration for Hester. He always pointed out the Puritans hypocrisy toward her.  “The founders of a new colony, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site for a prison.” They claim that their town is perfect, obviously they don't believe this if a prison is one of the first things they build. “before society had grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it.” Puritans claim to be free of sin yet shun Hester from their community. 
4) 
A) symbolism- the scarlet letter: adultery, sin, hard work, skill, charity, righteousness, sacredness, and grace. 
B) imagery- the forest: a place of passion and emotion.
C) allusion- literally the whole book is from the bible which is the biggest historical monument. 
D) POV- 3rd person omniscient: he describes everything rather than straight up tell you what they're feeling/thinking. 
E) Irony- for the puritans to claim to be so spiritual the way they treat Hester proves the opposite. 
F)  motif- CONFESS CONFESS CONFESS YOU'LL FEEL BETTER
G) simile- "Pearl… seemed to be borne upward, like a floating sea-bird , on the long heaves and 
swells of sound(162).” Pearl was compared to a bird for being free to her supposedly odd family situation. 

H) personification- "Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!" Fate was personified that their sins would eventually be known. 

I) allegory- in the custom house it's known that the narrator told this story with much parallelism to his own life which is reflected in The Scarlet Letter.

J) flashback- "But the former aspect of an intelectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had all together vanished and been succeeded by and eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look (166)." Hester reflects on how Chillingsworth used to be. 

1) indirect- the "eldest clergyman of Boston," is speaking to Hester, these references tell readers that Dimmesdale had been Hester's clergyman, for she attended his church; is godly; is a youth; is well acquainted with Hester and knows her "natural temper"; has the strength of his convictions to oppose the eldest clergyman who is undoubtedly his superior and supervisor; has a "young man's over-softness" of heart.

Direct- The narrator revealed that Dimmesdale came from "one of the greatest universities in England"; he has "eloquence and fervor"; he is already rising to "eminence", has a high white brow and brown "melancholy eyes," (has self-restraint)

2) Of course the authors syntax changes when he describes characters. All of the characters were totally different in every way possible. Hester was pitied, Dimmesdale was judged, Chillingsworth was hated or at least the antagonist to their love story. 

3) Hester was a static protagonist because she had already come to peace with her lifestyle. She wasn't hiding anything and that made her a lot happier than Dimmesdale because he had to learn to confess and he ended up dying from it. 

4) I didn't really feel like I met anyone because there were so many main characters with different point of views and stories that it was sort of like just listening to gossip.