and tried to get Hester back from the minister. He is dying and with his
last breaths he shouts his sin to the audience around and blesses Hester
and Pearl. He tells the people to take another better look at Hester and
at himself so they see the truth in them. He ripped off the ministerial
band from his chest, and the people stood shocked. The people are struck
with awe and sympathy. The doctor came over the minister, awestruck
because he will lose him and his revenge. Dimmesdale asks Pearl for a kiss
and she finally places one on his lips. Hester kneels over him and asks
him if they will not see each other again, and spend eternity together.
The reverend tells her that their sin was too large, and that is all she
should be concerned. He shouted farewell to the audience and breathed his
last breath.
Chapter 24: People swore after that day that when they saw the minister rip
off the band on his breast that a scarlet ‘A’ resided there. Many thought
that he made the revelation in the dying hour so everyone would know that
one who appeared so pure, was as much a sinner as the rest of them. Roger
Chillingworth died within the year and bequeathed large amounts of property
both in New England and in England to Pearl. This made Pearl the richest
heiress in the New World. Soon after his death, Hester Prynne and her
little Pearl disappeared. Years later Hester came back alone to live with
her sin in her cottage. Pearl was thought to be happily married elsewhere
and mindful of her mother. After her return, many people of the town went
to Hester for advice and help when they were in need. After many years she
died, and was placed next to the saintly minister. They shared a tombstone
and they would be together forever.
Character Profiles
Hester Prynne: A beautiful puritan woman full of strong passions, Hester
Prynne is the main character in the story. Employed as the village
seamstress, she is strong and caring, helping anyone she can when he or she
are in need. With a penitent heart, Hester travels through the story
becoming only a shadow of her former passionate loving self. Other than
the scarlet letter, she was a very moral woman whose only joy in life was
her daughter Pearl. Roger Chillingsworth: The missing husband of Hester
Prynne. He shows up the day that Hester is put on public display and does
not show himself as her husband. A scholar and a man of medicine, his soul
purpose in his life becomes revenge against the man who helped his wife
sin. By the end of the story, he is shown to be an evil character.
Pearl: Looked on as the devil’s child, Pearl is the only one in the story
that is purely innocent. She is passionate, intelligent, and energetic.
Pearl is in touch with nature and with her mother’s feelings. Ever since
she was born, Pearl had a fascination with the scarlet letter that is a
constant reminder for Hester of her sin.
Arthur Dimmesdale: The minister of the town that the people adore, Arthur
was the secret lover of Hester Prynne. He was a sickly man who took his
sin very seriously. He spent the seven years since his indiscretion with
Mistress Prynne trying to repent. He wore down his body with his penitence
and his sin ate away his soul. In the end, he frees himself from his guilt
by admitting to everyone his sin.
Metaphor Analysis
The Rose Bush: A rose bush that grew outside the prison was a symbol of
survival, that there is life after the prison where Hester spent he
beginning of the story.
The Scarlet Letter ‘A’: The letter that Hester was forced to wear upon her
bosom, the scarlet letter was not only a symbol of her adulterous sin, but
of the women herself. The letter masks her beauty and passion as the story
goes until it is what she is known.
The Black Man in the Woods: the peoples symbol for the devil. The woods in
those times were a very scary place, and they thought that people that went
into it came out evil and corrupted.
Theme Analysis
The Scarlet Letter is a story that illustrates intricate pieces of the
Puritan lifestyle. Centered first on a sin committed by Hester Prynne and
her secret lover before the story ever begins, the novel details how sin
affects the lives of the people involved. For Hester, the sin forces her
into isolation from society and even from herself. Her qualities that
Hawthorne describes at the opening of the book, i.e. her beauty, womanly
qualities, and passion are, after a time, eclipsed by the ‘A’ she is forced
to wear. An example of this is her hair. Long hair is something in this
time period that is a symbol of a woman. At the beginning of the story,
Hawthorne tells of Hester’s long flowing hair. After she wears the scarlet
letter for a time, he paints a picture of her with her hair out of site
under a cap, and all the wanton womanliness gone from her.
Yet, even with her true eclipsed behind the letter, of the three main
characters affected, Hester has the easiest time because her sin is out in
the open. More than a tale of sin, the Scarlet Letter is also an intense
love story that shows itself in the forest scene between Hester and the
minister Arthur Dimmesdale. With plans to run away with each, Arthur and
Hester show that their love has surpassed distance and time away from each
other. This love also explains why Hester would not reveal the identity of
her fellow sinner when asked on the scaffolding. Roger Chillingworth is
the most affected by the sin, though he was not around when the sin took
place. Demented by his thoughts of revenge and hate, Hawthorne shows Mr.
Chillingworth to be a devil or as a man with an evil nature. He himself
commits one of the seven deadly sins with his wrath.
By the end of the tale that surpasses seven years, Hester is respected and
revered by the community as a doer of good works, and the minister is
worshipped for his service in the church. Only Mr. Chillingworth is looked
upon badly by the townspeople although no one knows why. Through it all,
Hawthorne illustrates that even sin can produce purity, and that purity
came in the form of the sprightly Pearl. Though she is isolated with her
mother, Pearl finds her company and joy in the nature that surrounds her.
She alone knows that her mother must keep the scarlet letter on her at all
times, and that to take it off is wrong.
Through the book the child is also constantly asking the minister to
confess his sin to the people of the town inherently knowing that it will
ease his pain. Hawthorne’s metaphor of the rose growing next to the prison
is a good metaphor for Pearl’s life that began in that very place. The
reader sees this connection when Pearl tells the minister that her mother
plucked her from the rose bush outside of the prison. Finally, for all the
characters, Hawthorne’s novel illustrates how one sin can escalate to
encompass one’s self so that the true humans behind the sin are lost. This
is what makes Hawthorne’s novel not only a story of love vs. hate, sin vs.
purity, good vs. evil, but all of these combined to make a strikingly
historical tragedy as well.
Top Ten Quotes
1) «It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that
may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of
human frailty and sorrow.» 2) « ‘People say,’ said another, ‘that the
Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to
his heart that such a scandal has come upon his congregation.’» 3) « ‘If
thou feelest to be for thy soul’s peace, and that they earthly punishment
will there by be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak
out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer.’» 4) «But she named
the infant ‘Pearl,’ as being of great price- purchased with all she had-
her mother’s only pleasure.» 5) «After putting her fingers in her mouth,
with many ungrateful refusals to answer Mr. Wilson’s question, the child
finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked
by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison door» 6) «
‘He hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious Mr. Dimmesdale, in the hot
passion of his heart!’» 7) «Such helpfulness was found in her- so much
power to do and power to sympathize- that many people refused to interpret
the scarlet ‘A’ by it’s original signification. They said that it meant
‘Able’; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a women’s strength.» 8) «‘That
old man!- the physician!- the one whom they call Roger Chillingworth!-he
was my husband!’» 9) «Pacify her, if thou lovest me!» 10) « ‘Hester
Prynne’ cried he, with a piercing earnestness ‘in the name of Him, so
terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do
what- for my own heavy sin and miserable agony- I withheld myself from
doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me!»
Slaughterhouse Five
Chapter One. Summary:
The narrator assures us that the book we are about to read is true, more or
less. The parts dealing with World War II are most faithful to actual
events. Twenty-three years have passed since the end of the war, and for
much of that time the narrator has been trying to write about the bombing
of Dresden. He was never able to bring make the project work. When he
thinks about Dresden's place in his memory, he always recalls two things:
an obscene limerick about a man whose penis has let him down, and "My Name
is Yon Yonson," a song which has no ending.
Late some nights, the narrator gets drunk and begins to track down old
friends with the telephone. Some years ago he tracked down Bernard O'Hare,
an old war buddy of his, using Bell Atlantic phone operators. When he
tracked his old friend down, he asked if Bernard would help him remember
things about the war. Bernard seemed unenthusiastic. When the narrator
suggests the execution of Edgar Derby, an American who stole a teapot from
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