Adolescent Experiences and Life: A Nathaniel Hawthorne Study

One’s experience in adolescent years will ultimately affect their entire life. As children grow up, they are shaped by the experience of their childhood, these will affect every aspect of their lives. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses imagery and details of Pearl to suggest how the abuse from by others and even her own mother have affected her in order to convey her contorted values and desires which are consequences of repeated misconduct and mistreatment received from others.
When children are treated unfairly because of perceived ideas, it is only reasonable to assume the child will have unusual values just as Pearl’s values have become twisted from the norm. Throughout her life has endured lonesomeness and fear, her foundation has been very uneven.

When Pearl’s old enough, she and her mother have fun while collecting flowers, when Pearl started to “Fling them, one by one, at her mother’s bosom”(Hawthorne 67). As Pearl grows up, she’s constantly fascinated by the A on Hester's bosom. Unknown to Pearls the product of sin, and a constant reminder of evil. As Pearl “flings them” at the A, she reminds everyone of her mother sins, and how she's the product of sin. The townspeople, in turn, shunned Pearl because of the fear of the abnormal, and even her own mother treats her strangely, as one might guess. While Hester tried to discipline her child, she decided to “permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses.”(Hester 63) By allowing Pearls to ultimately decide her own fate and discipline. Pearls is left to her own devices, allowing her to have the run of the world it may seem. In return, shes allowed to be “swayed by her own impulses” allows her to form her own ideas of rules and what discipline should be. As she has no idea of discipline, she cannot conform to the towns norms, therefore not only is she an outsider, she’s in a way a freak to the