To the inhabitants of mid-17th century Boston, the scaffold is a place to gather, gawk, and gossip. In the puritanical society in which the novel is set, the scaffold serves the purpose of giving those who have committed a crime a place to stand and face their fellow citizens. Three times, the scaffold plays a role in a significant scene in the novel, not only elevating a criminal above the heads of others, but also revealing hidden truths. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold scenes represent the theme that what happens in the dark will eventually come to light.
Before we are first introduced to Hester Prynne, the protagonist, we learn that men and women are gathered around the scaffold kibitzing. The women’s conversation centers around Hester, and the forms of punishment they would have instilled upon her for her sin if they had been given to opportunity to do so. When Hester makes her first appearance, she is leaving the prison, and going to stand on the scaffold. Her sin is a very serious one to the puritans, adultery. As she stands on the scaffold, with the eyes of the populace boring into her, two symbols of her sin are presented to us. These are the scarlet letter, a red ‘A’ which is embroidered onto the bosom of her dress, and her daughter Pearl. Her daughter Pearl was conceived during the adulterous act for which Hester is standing on the scaffold. One of the members of the throng which has gathered is Roger Chillingworth, dressed in Indian garb. Chillingworth is Hester’s husband, who knows nothing of Hester’s adultery—until now. In this primary scaffold scene, the scaffold serves to elevate Hester on a platform of shame. Her ignominy is being reinforced to those who already know of it, and her ac...
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...re Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth repeats that Dimmesdale has escaped him. These utterances, while not seeming like anything of significance to the townspeople, represent Chillingworth’s telling of his plain, however cryptically, showing that the scaffold has played a role from his journey from dark to light.
The scaffold is a place of much activity and importance to the puritans, and Hawthorne centers many of the significant moments in this story around it. The Scarlet Letter is a highly symbolic work, and two of the most prevalent symbols are light and dark meaning truth and secrecy. Many of the characters go through the cyclic motion between truth and secrecy, and the scaffold has a great deal to do with one becoming the other. It is where Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth first dim into the darkness, but it is also where each finally returns to the light.
A few years later the event is again repeated. It is very similar to the
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," there are three very important scenes that all take place at the town scaffold, a place of great shame in their strict Puritan society. These scenes represent the progression of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale over the course of the story. Each scene involves him in some way and one can easily see that he has changed dramatically in all three.
She lost all her fiery passion on the scaffold, by which society mocked and watched and she was punished for the sins she committed. The scaffold became the essence of sin and hatred for Hester, Hawthorne created the meaning of this by stating things like the scaffold was “the very ideal of ignominy [and] was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron”. Hester makes her transformation on this scaffold and although she is silent ad still filled with anger, she will never be the same due pain she felt on that scaffold. Through society's punishments and harsh bias, Hester is stripped of all passion and this is continually argued with her change as she wears the scarlet letter. In the beginning, Hester tries to cover it up, but the burn of those eyes who look upon her still stand. ONce in the free spirit environment of the forest and she takes the scarlet A off she becomes happy and passionate once again that even her own daughter doesn’t recognize
The three scaffold scenes bring great significance to the plot of the Scarlet Letter. The novel is based on repenting the sins of adultery. The scaffold represents a place of shame and pity but also of final triumphs. Each scene illustrates the importance of the scaffold behind them with many potent similarities and differences.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's work, The Scarlet Letter, focuses on the small Puritan community of Boston during the seventeenth century. In the center of the town is a " . . .weather darkened scaffold. . . (234)" where sinners are made to face the condemning public. The accused experience strange phenomena while on the scaffold - some become braver, some meeker. And whether the public is looking at them or not, they become their true selves on the scaffold. In essence, everything that is real and true occurs on the scaffold, and everything that is illusion or hypocrisy occurs everywhere else.
Since the beginning of time humans have had to confront their sinfulness. Some rely on religious faith to help with the struggle against sin while others add to their sins by lying to hide other sins. In the end, man must stand alone – as a sinful creature before God. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale struggles with his sin until he discovers the scaffold as a place to find peace with himself.
The events leading up to the next scaffold scene, some years later, are some of the most significant scenes in the entire novel. The treatment of Dimmesdale by Chillingworth, who Dimmesdale had taken in as his physician, plays a key role, due to the fact that Chillingworth?s intentions are less than pure. Chillingworth is bent on revenge, and is willing to do anything necessary, even destroy another man?s life in order to soothe the savage beast within. However, deep inside Chillingworth?s...
In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, we notice that action only happens in a few places, among which are the forest, the market place, the governor’s residence, and Dimmesdale’s house. Although all these locations are significant to the story, the most important symbol among them is certainly the scaffold in the market place, where the story begins and ends. The scaffold’s meaning changes throughout the story and has different values for different characters. It represents humiliation, then insight, and finally redemption for Hester and Dimmesdale, but for Chillingworth, it symbolizes birth of sin, growth of sin, and ultimately consummation by sin.
In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne three major events occur on the town scaffold. The scaffold serves as a place of public humiliation and shame. Hawthorne places three events that occur on the scaffold that play a major role. The first appearance of the scaffold is when Hester serves her time of public humiliation. The second appearance of the scaffold scene is throughout the middle of the novel when Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale arrive together on the scaffold. Hawthorne then brings the three back together once again in the third scaffold scene to end the tragic story of the Scarlet Letter. The three scaffold scenes play major roles throughout Hester and Dimmesdale’s life.
Arthur Dimmesdale’s house not only contained his own secrets, but also accommodated Roger Chillingworth’s as well. It was from their residence together that the detrimental repercussion of their enigmas appear; thus relating in the key point: secrets destroyed the keeper. The first indication of this correspondence was Dimmesdale’s developed illness. Withholding the reality of his position as the father of Hester’s child from the town for status purposes had begun to physically dismantle him, literally from the inside out. For example, “‘I need no
Hawthorne symbolizes the scaffold as being a symbol of “sin and public shame”. In The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne Pg #65), Hawthorne calls the scaffold, “A miserable eminence.” Clearly stating that the scaffold does not symbolize a good thing, but a negative idea, and if someone is on it, they are going to feel that miserable type of shame feeling. The scaffold is suppose to make someone feel guilt as they stands on it and let everyone look at them judge them. Like, in The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne has to stand on the scaffold and let everyone look at her a judge her with the big red “A” on her chest. Hawthorne made it easy to symbolize the scaffold by leaving well explained context clues.
The Scarlet Letter, a classic American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, contains a plot that follows the controversial life of Hester Prynne, the main protagonist of the story. Set in the mid 1600’s in Boston, Massachusetts, it represented the Puritan society and its ideals at that time. Its rich plot has enticed and enraptured readers for many years, while Historical elements have allowed readers to analyze and understand the content better. The Scarlet Letter is a piece of historical fiction that contains a real representation of the period in which it is set in and is mostly historically accurate, barring a few minor inaccuracies.
Hawthorne manages to create many metaphors within his novel The Scarlet Letter. The rose bush outside the prison door, the black man, and the scaffold are three metaphors. Perhaps the most important metaphor would be the scaffold, which plays a great role throughout the entire story. The three scaffold scenes which Hawthorne incorporated into The Scarlet Letter contain a great deal of significance and importance the plot. Each scene brings a different aspect of the main characters, the crowd or more minor characters, and what truth or punishment is being brought forth.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the story is set in New England during the colonial times, mainly the middle of the seventeenth century. As the plot of the novel progresses, the importance of setting is further aggrandized when the main character, Hester Prynne, is isolated in a strict Puritan society. To further elucidate Hester’s situation, Hawthorne utilizes two types of settings, physical and historical setting. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne uses the settings to expose the rigidness of the Puritan society of the time period and how its obstinate and judgmental nature impacted people within the society.
The Scarlet Letter is a fictional novel that begins with an introductory passage titled ‘The Custom-House’. This passage gives a historical background of the novel and conveys the narrator’s purpose for writing about the legend of Hester Prynne even though the narrator envisions his ancestors criticizing him and calling him a “degenerate” because his career was not “glorifying God”, which is very typical of the strict, moralistic Puritans. Also, although Hawthorne is a Romantic writer, he incorporates properties of Realism into his novel by not idealizing the characters and by representing them in a more authentic manner. He does this by using very formal dialogue common to the harsh Puritan society of the seventeenth century and reflecting their ideals through this dialogue. The Puritans held somewhat similar views as the Transcendentalists in that they believed in the unity of God and the world and saw signs and symbols in human events, such as when the citizens related the meteo...