Nature plays a very significant role in Hawthorne’s 1850 novel named The Scarlet Letter. Nature has a very important and symbolic role throughout the entire story that gives imagery and foreshadows actions to the readers. Throughout the story, it can be described as very forgiving. Nature could be an example of almost a light to all the characters in the story. Many chapters in the book are named after nature, or have to do with nature, such as, A Forest Walk, The Child At The Brookside, and A Flood of Sunshine. Hawthorne uses nature in many ways throughout the story.
The first way nature is significant in the story is how it is used to show the mood of a particular scene. Hawthorne is very detailed in describing what the setting is like in the story, particularly by describing the weather. When
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One big symbol that occured in the book that is apart of nature was the meteor. The meteor was a sign to Dimmesdale that he should wear a mark of shame like Hester, because he also committed adultery. It gave him the characteristic of having personal sin, and also taught the reader about how the other townspeople didn’t know about his sin. Next, Pearl becomes to be known as one with nature. When Hester and Pearl go to the forest, Pearl was able to go and do wonders in the forest. All the animals of the forest would tag along with her and follow her. This characterized Pearl with having a connection with nature and it showed how she was a lot gentler in the forest than she was in the street of town. Another sign of nature was the sunlight. The sunlight would come out and shine on Pearl but when Hester got near it, it would suddenly disappear. Hester would say that the sunlight didn’t like her because of the Scarlet Letter, but Pearl seemed to almost absorb the sunlight. The sunlight made Hester think about how happy Pearl was in nature and that the sunlight represented that Pearl is the light in Hester’s
... showing a less hostile nature. She adorns herself with flowers, and is in ?closest sympathy with the antique wood.? (214) Through this description of Pearl, the forest takes on a sympathetic nature, and is portrayed as an environment where one can find peace with one?s surroundings and be in an environment where they feel amicability instead of antagonism.
Early in the novel, Pearl notices that sunlight strays away from Hester: “Mother, said little Pearl, the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom” (Hawthorne 166). This shows that the scarlet letter and the sin, wanted to stay in the darkness, and that the light did not want touch Hester’s sinful body. Even young Pearl is able to recognize the evilness associated with the scarlet letter and how the light shy’s away from it due to its absence of good. In a scene later in the novel, sunlight shines on Hester when she removes the scarlet letter A from her bosom: “she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves. . . All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest” (Hawthorne 184-185). The light represents the purity that Hester desires. Once Hester frees herself from the evilness and sin associated with the scarlet letter, she is showered in sunlight, which reveals the good nature that lies within her. This signifies a rebirth, and also reiterates the symbol of
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.
One aspect of the Garden of Eden theme is portrayed by the connection of Hester and Dimmesdale. Hester's story parallels Eve, the original mother of mankind, a woman exiled from the New Garden of Eden due to an unforgivable sin. She is doomed forever to walk outside the garden, no longer able to partake of the fruits of paradise, barred from reentry by seeming "divine intervention." Hester is the temptress of Dimmesdale, offering him the fruit of good and evil which, heretofore, removes all naivete and forces him to walk, tortured, through the world with the knowledge of right, wrong, and the magnitude of his sin seeming to accost him at each new turn of the dim path down which he walks.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 17th century. The novel addresses the moral dilemmas of personal responsibility in the lives of its characters. With literary techniques Hawthorne works into his romanticized fiction a place of special meaning for nature. He uses the rhetorical skills of Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne throughout the novel to help reveal the true colors of his characters and rhetorical devices such as figurative language as in the personification of nature to give his work a strong narrative voice.
The sunlight gives the reader a feeling of exposure and scrutiny. This feeling is later reveled to the reader by Hawthorne,
However, it carries an even more important reference to the sun in chapter sixteen, the sun also symbolizing guilt-free happiness. Pearl seems to absorb the sunlight while it flees from Hester and her mark of sin. In chapter eighteen, the two colors, green and gold, intertwines and implicates pure serenity. Amidst the green, lush forest, Hester takes the letter off her bosom and instantly transforms into a new person, a person finally revealing herself from under a shield of shame.
First of all, in the town Hester and Pearl are looked down as sinners. Hester does a lot of charity work for the poor, but even the needy look down on her because of the letter upon her bosom. The town is where Hester gets bullied for her identity in the Puritan society. To contrast that, the forest differs because that is where there isn’t anybody to judge her . Pearl can play happily there without anybody looking at her as if she’s the devil’s child.
Sunlight represents the light of the Lord and purity, and it only shines on those who do not have a secret sin. Hester and Pearl are in the forest when they see this ray of light. Pearl says to Hester, “Mother, the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.” (Hawthorne 183).
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's work, The Scarlet Letter, nature plays a very symbolic role. Throughout the book, nature is incorporated into the story line. One example of this is with the character of Pearl. Pearl is very different than all the other characters due to her special relationship with Nature. Hawthorne personifies Nature as sympathetic towards sins against the puritan way of life. Hester's sin causes Nature to accept Pearl.
The Scarlet Letter is a well-known novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In this novel Hawthorne wrote in depth about the Puritans’ reception to sin, in particular, adultery. He also includes brilliant visuals of the repercussions that occur when the town of Salem hears of Hester’s adultery. There are many relationships within the book, from a lover to a beautiful yet illegitimate daughter. Symbolism runs throughout, even a simple rose bush outside of a jail holds so much meaning. Hawthorne reveals themes all through the novel one in particular, was sin. Although sin does not occur often in the Puritan lifestyle Hawthorne shows the importance and change this one deceit makes for the town of Salem.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, nature and Pearl are depicted as innocence and evil. Hester brings her daughter, Pearl, to live in the forest because they are not accepted by society due to the Scarlet letter. The relationship between these two is Pearl creates a bond with nature mentally since society rejects her as a product of sin. Nature is viewed in the eyes of a Puritan as a place where witches live to perform witchcraft and where darkness inhabits. However, the relationship between nature and Pearl gives her freedom and growth.
Hawthorne consistently places Hester in shade to portray her as sinful and hiding the truth. In the beginning of the novel, Hester spends days in prison with Pearl. When Hester and Pearl are finally released, Hester is described as "a black shadow emerging into the sunshine"(49). Within the sunshine is a sinless group of plebeians awaiting the emergence of Hester. In another important scene, Pearl and Hester visit Governor Bellingham's mansion. Bellingham greets Hester with four men at his side. One of the men is Hester's "partner in crime," Arthur Dimmesdale. As soon as he enters the room, a shadow from the window curtain is cast upon Hester. Both Hester and Dimmesdale are trying to conceal Dimmesdale's sin just as the shadow is concealing Hester. Even in Hester's own secluded cabin, she is not welcome into light. In chapter 13, Hester can only be contained in her "darkened house"(148). When sunshine is present, she is not and her shadow fades "across the threshold"(148). Hawthorne continues to impound the idea of Hester's concealment in a scene taken place in the forest. As Hester and Pearl walk through the forest to meet Dimmesdale, sunshine is erased with each step Hester takes. Even Pearl notices this and says, ."..The sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself..."(168). Hawthorne cannot get any more apparent with his symbolism of dark involving Hester.
Pearl, Hester's child, is portrayed Puritanically, as a child of sin who should be treated as such, ugly, evil, and shamed. The reader more evidently notices that Hawthorne carefully, and sometimes not subtly at all, places Pearl above the rest. She wears colorful clothes, is extremely smart, pretty, and described as impish. More often than not, she shows her intelligence and free thought, a trait of the Romantics. One of Pearl's Favorite activities is playing with flowers and trees. The reader will recall that anything affiliated with the forest was evil to Puritans. Hawthorne, however, thought that the forest was beautiful and natural. "And she was gentler here [in the forest] than in the grassy- margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared to know it" Pearl fit in with natural things. Also, Pearl is always effervescent and joyous, which is definitely a negative to the Puritans. Pearl is used as a symbol mirroring between the Puritanical views and the Romantic ways.
Initially Pearl is the symbol of Hesters public punishment for her adultery. As the novel progresses and Pearl matures she symbolizes the deteriation of Hester's like by constantly asking her about the scarlet letter "A". Pearl in a sense wants her mother to live up to her sin and, she achieves this by constantly asking her about the scarlet letter. Another peice of evidence that shows how Pearl symbolizes the sin Hester has committed, is when the town government wants to take Pearl away from her Revrend Dimmsdale convinces the government that Pearl is a living reminder of her sin. This is essentialy true, Hester without Pearl is like having Hester without sin.