Scarlet Letter Opening Scene Essay

In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne can be broken into 5 major scenes. These include the prologue, Chillingworth discovering the father, the scaffold with Hester, Dimmesdale and Pearl, the forest meeting, and the conclusion. Each one of these scenes plays a role in the development of the novel, and furthers the plot.

The first of these five scenes is the prologue. The book begins with Hester Prynne emerging from a cell door in Boston, Massachusetts. The date of the novel is about 20 years after the founding of Boston. As Hester enters the marketplace, she is escorted by a guard to a scaffold. She is holding a child but is making sure not to cover the red letter A on her chest. The letter A is punishment for committing adultery.

4 years after scene 2, scene 3 takes place. After being tortured for 4 years by Roger Chillingworth, Dimmesdale starts to lose his grasp on reality. Dimmesdale leaves his house near midnight to go to the scaffold to publicly announce his sin, but with no one listening. He cries out into the night, but his words fall on no one’s ears. Hester and Pearl are passing through when Dimmesdale invites them to join him on the scaffold. As they hold each other’s hands on the scaffold, Dimmesdale feels a new hope. Pearl asks Dimmesdale, “Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, tomorrow noontide?” DImmesdale refuses, and as he does, a meteor rips through the night sky, leaving a red letter A in the clouds. Hawthorne uses this as a symbol to refer back to their combined sin, adultery. He emphasizes the fact that with every sin comes a consequence, and Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin came with the birth of Pearl. They all stand on the scaffold together, as a family. But Pearl is confused on why Dimmesdale will not stand with Pearl and her mother the following day. Dimmesdale cannot stand with the rest of his family because it will show he is the father of Pearl, leading to his