Symbolism in Scarlet Letter

Contents:

* Introduction.......................................................................................3

* Symbolism...........................................................................................4

* Symbols from the Bible................................................................5

* The symbolism of names...............................................................5

* The scarlet letter...........................................................................6

* The rose, the prison and the cemetery.................................7

* The symbol of the Forest and the Meteor..........................8

* Symbols of color and light...........................................................8

* Conclusion............................................................................................10

* Bibliography........................................................................................11

Introduction

"In 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter, which made his fame, changed his fortune and gave to our literature its first symbolic novel. In this novel were concentrated the entire resources of Hawthorne's creative personality and experience."

Hawthorne found his inspiration for writing in the materials about "the ethical view of life of his Calvinistic New England ancestors, and his tales are almost always allegories with morals attached." The central theme of Hawthorne's stories is "the psychological effect of the conviction of sin on the lives of the early colonists." Hawthorne explored the depths of the human soul and was investigating the problems of moral and social responsibility. He was discovering the Puritan past of his family, "the persecutors of Quakers and "witches"." Hawthorne lived in a town where the witch trials very often took place. He was very familiar with the history of Salem and the lives of the Puritan colonist, where sin presented an awful reality. So, "he turned naturally to the extreme form of symbolism, the moral allegory, as the most nearly perfect medium available to his desperate needs for confession and for secrecy. Here he could say what he wanted to say and yet hide behind his symbols."

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The Scarlet letter is a classic novel in which a person is punished by an entire community because their own ideas deviated from the common morals and values. In his novel, Hawthorne shows the way a "good Christian society" would lash out at anything they were afraid of.

The writer brings as to media res of the story when, in the first chapter, introduces the main character Hester Prynne. Believing that her husband, Roger Chillingworth is dead, she had an affair with the reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and out of that sin their daughter Pearl was born. Hester is publicly humiliated as a punishment for breaking a puritan belief and one of the Ten Commandments, adultery. After she had stood for hours in front of the crowd who criticized her, she was given her punishment of being recognized with her sin forever by wearing the letter "A" on her chest. She is thrown out of the town and is no longer a community member. She becomes an outcast and lives with little Pearl on the border between the forest and the settlement, between civilization and nature. That perfect puritan society threw her out because she was different from them all; she dared to do something they were forced to deny themselves. Hester stood in front of the crowd holding her daughter Pearl in her arms. She was hiding the scarlet letter with even greater symbol of her sin - the child born out of it.

However, although the main character is Hester, the book is not so much about her innate character as it is an examination of the forces that shape her and the transformations those forces effect.

"The Scarlet Letter is almost all picture. The adultery which sets everything going happens before the book begins, and is never made believable."

Symbolism

"The novel has its unique kinds of composition - composition by scene, picture, action, and character as well as composition by metaphor and symbol."

There are many different symbols in the novel, which play an important role. "His symbols are broadly traditional, coming to him from Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and Bunyan - the light and the dark, the forest and the town, the dark woman and the fair woman, the fountain, the mirror, the cavern of the heart, the river, the sea, Eden, the rose, the serpent, fire and so on."

Symbols from the Bible

First of all, there is the traditional symbol which comes from the Bible, about the Heaven, the Hell and the Fall. Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are forced to toil and to procreate. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve since in both cases sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as "her passport onto regions where other women dared not tread." The Puritans viewed sin as a threat to the community that should be punished and suppressed. "Behind all Christian tragedy is the theme of the Fall, whether of man or of the angels, and the consequent struggle for the salvation. Hawthorne shares this tradition with the Hebrew prophets, with Milton, and with Melville... The Christian myth of Heaven and Hell was for Hawthorne the artist a system of acknowledged symbols through which to describe the predicament of nineteenth century man."

The symbolism of names

All major characters in the novel, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Rodger Chillingworth and little Pearl have symbolic names.

There is a Book of Hester in the Old Testament. Hester from that story was a beautiful