Theme Of The Forest In The Scarlet Letter

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The Forest in The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne in his early college years extensively read gothic romances and even classic literature. In studying these works they leaked into his works especially one of his most popular The Scarlet Letter. He decided to write historical fiction and romances, which all took place in New England’s past (Bloom 14). Hawthorne mixing gothic romances, writing historical fiction, and using the puritan time was the product of The Scarlet Letter. In the puritans time, everything was God and about God. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter he uses an abundant amount of symbolism of the forest and the settlement. “The Prison Door” there are two nature symbolisms in this short chapter. First, “a grass plot, much …show more content…

“The sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of what is on your bosom.”(Hawthorne 192) using the sunshine Pearl talks how it does not love you and hides because they are afraid her father, Mr Dimmesdale, and the townspeople run away when they see her because of the letter on her bosom.The sunshine is used as a symbol of the approval of God and nature or guilt free happiness (Literary Articles 1). The brook and the forest trees work talk to Pearl and tell the stories of what has happen in the forest, they act like a friend to her (Hawthorne …show more content…

“As if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two moral hearts, it vanished with their sorrow.” (Hawthorne 214) the thought of them going off to England together cause them to both feel so much joy that it caused all that to happen. In their moment of happiness all of the gloom in the g=forest was gone, finally everything looked happy and they felt happy. Even the sunshine came down on Hester which has Pearl had pointed out had not happened since the letter. “The great black forest-stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its bosom- because the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how.” (Hawthorne 215) As they look over at their daughter, the product of their sin, she is playing with the only friend she has ever known. The forest has been her playmate, unlike any other wild animals stop and play with her and wildflowers, they all recognized a wild kindred

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