Click to see our best Video content. Take A Sneak Peak At The Movies Coming Out This Week (8/12) Mel Brooks To Release New Memoir ‘All About Me’ The Scarlet Letter Introduction. Passion, wild emotion, and forbidden love: is it the newest 50 Shades of Whatever? Or is it Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, published in and set over a century earlier, amid those stuffy old Puritans with their funny hats and buckles?. Yep. It's the second one. Nathaniel Hawthorne set the story of poor, persecuted Hester Prynne and her lover in Pearl wants to know what the scarlet letter means. Hester is tempted to tell her because she has no one else in whom she can confide. But despite repeated questions by Pearl, Hester says she wears the letter for "the sake of the gold thread" — the first time she had "been false to the symbol on her bosom."
The Scarlet Letter The Custom-House: Introductory Summary & Analysis | SparkNotes
As they move toward the town hall for the evening feast, Dimmesdale sees Hester and hesitates. Turning toward the scaffold, he calls to Hester and Pearl to join him. He declares that God has led him there. Custom house essay scarlet letter crowd stares.
The minister and Hester then exchange words. She asks him whether they will spend their afterlives together, and he responds that God will decide whether they will receive any further punishment for breaking His sacred law. The minister bids her farewell and dies. See Important Quotations Explained. In their absence, the story of the scarlet letter grows into a legend.
Many years later, Hester suddenly returns alone to live in the cottage and resumes her charity work. This third and final scaffold scene serves as a catharsis, as all unsettled matters are given resolution. Pearl acquires a father, Dimmesdale finally confesses, and Chillingworth definitively loses his chance for revenge.
Moreover, despite the fact that the resolution takes place before the assembled townspeople, the Puritan elders have no power to judge or punish in this situation. Instead, Dimmesdale serves as his own prosecutor and judge. He apparently wills his own death, thereby breaking away from Puritan morals. That is, if Dimmesdale is capable of such a sin, then surely every individual must be; perhaps sinfulness should be acknowledged as an inescapable element of the human condition.
However, no such reconsideration takes place. It is this latter group, which argues that Dimmesdale meant to deliver a lesson on sin and was not confessing to any actual wrongdoing, that reestablishes the old ways. In their view, Dimmesdale meant to teach his parishioners that all men have the potential for evil, not that evil is a necessary part of man.
Correspondingly, custom house essay scarlet letter, the conservatives believe, society need only renew its vigilance against evil rather than reconsider its very conception of evil.
Even in his defiance, then, Dimmesdale is appropriated by the Puritan system as a means of reinforcing its pre established messages.
However, this victory for the entrenched ways seems to custom house essay scarlet letter only temporary. The final acknowledgment of that sin custom house essay scarlet letter freed her. Pearl returns to Europe and marries into an aristocratic family. Notably, custom house essay scarlet letter does not go to England, which is the society against which the Puritans define themselves.
Pearl opts out of this binary altogether, finding a home in a place where the social structure is well established and need not rely on a dogmatic adherence to rules in order to protect its existence. Unlike Pearl, Hester can never escape her role as an emblem of something larger. Having sacrificed her humanity and her individuality to her child, and to the letter on her chest, Hester now becomes a spokeswoman for larger issues, custom house essay scarlet letter. She becomes an advocate for women and takes on a role in the community similar to that of a minister: she cares for and attends to the spiritual needs of her fellow human beings.
Although she and Dimmesdale are together at last, the distance between their graves and the design of their shared headstone seem to call out for interpretive readings. The simple romantic relationship between them is overshadowed by its larger representations. By the time Hester dies, the meaning of the scarlet letter on her chest has become confused and ambiguous.
While it gives her authority and even respectability among some people, it will always mark her as guilty of what society still considers a sin, custom house essay scarlet letter.
The fates of the other characters also suggest that it is not always easy to differentiate between hate and love, between essential identity and assigned symbolism, or between sin and righteousness.
Read a translation for Chapter The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter. Ace your assignments with our guide to The Scarlet Letter! Search all of SparkNotes Search Suggestions Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. No Fear Literature Translations Literature Study Guides Glossary of Literary Terms How to Write Literary Analysis. Biography Biology Chemistry Computer Science Drama Economics Film Health History Math Philosophy Physics Poetry Psychology Short Stories Sociology US Government and Politics.
SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Character List Hester Prynne Roger Chillingworth Arthur Dimmesdale Pearl Governor Bellingham Mistress Hibbins. Did Hester ever love Chillingworth? What type of work does Chillingworth take on in New England? What does Dimmesdale believe he sees when the meteor lights up the night sky?
How does Pearl react when she first sees her mother without the scarlet A? What makes Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale finally feel hope about their future? Why does Hester choose the forest to meet Dimmesdale and Chillingworth? What does the last sentence of the novel mean? Important Quotes Explained By Theme Female Independence Guilt Nature vs.
Society Empathy. By Symbol The Scarlet A The Meteor Pearl By Setting Boston in the s. Book Full Book Quiz The Custom-House: Introductory Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters Chapters More Character List Analysis of Major Characters Themes, Motifs, and Symbols. Suggestions for Further Reading Related Links Movie Adaptations Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter Background.
Please wait while we process your payment. Unlock your FREE SparkNotes Plus Trial! Unlock your FREE Trial! Sign up and get instant access to save the page as your favorite. Summary Chapters 23— Previous section Chapters 21—22 Next section Full Book Summary, custom house essay scarlet letter. Test your knowledge Take the Chapters Quick Quiz. Read a translation Read a translation for Chapter The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter. Read a translation Read a translation of Chapter Conclusion.
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The Scarlet Letter - The Custom-House - Nathaniel Hawthorne
, time: 3:17The Scarlet Letter Chapters 23–24 Summary & Analysis | SparkNotes
Click to see our best Video content. Take A Sneak Peak At The Movies Coming Out This Week (8/12) Mel Brooks To Release New Memoir ‘All About Me’ The Scarlet Letter study guide contains a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Best summary PDF, themes, and quotes Summary: The Custom-House: Introductory. This introduction provides a frame for the main narrative of The Scarlet Letter. The nameless narrator, who shares quite a few traits with the book’s author, takes a post as the “chief executive officer,” or surveyor, of the Salem Custom House
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