By: Nathaniel Hawthorne Quote
Commentary
Ch.1: “...some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age…” (pg.41)
The author uses imagery and is telling the reader about how the jail cell is old and broke down and you can tell it is used a lot.
Ch.1: “But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June...” (pg.41)
Once again the author is using imagery to describe the rose bush and it must be very pretty and nice.
Ch.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.” (pg.42)
I didn’t really comprehend this quote. But from my understanding I think the author is symbolizing the difference between sweet blossom and the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.
Ch.2: “It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbons, the bitter tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows.” (pg.43)
Mistress Hibbons is part of witchcraft obviously. She stays in the woods and she will be killed soon.
Ch.2: “Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.” (pg.45)
The lady seems like she feels sorry for Hester which should be unlikely because the Puritan community are not as sympathetic.
Ch.2: “One token of shame would but poorly serve to hide another.” (pg.46)
Hester takes in the blame that is put on her. Even though she seems a bit arrogant about it, she brushes it off and accepts it.
Ch.3: “From the intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet letter was at length revealed, by discerning on the outskirts of the crowd a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts.” (pg.52)
This quote is saying that Hester and Chillingworth are outcasts of the crowd by the way they used “outskirts”.
Ch.3: “He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, could hardly be termed aged.” (pg.52)
He might be an old man.
Ch.3: “While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal, still fixed gaze towards the stranger; so fixed a gaze, that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her.” (pg.54)
Hester basically blocks out the many Puritans looking at her.
Ch.4: “After her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was found to be in a state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness…” (pg.60)
It seems like Hester was a little bit creepy and she was fooling people. Who knows?
Ch.4: “As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on the scarlet letter, which forwith seemed to scortch into Hester’s breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed her involuntary gesture, and smiled. “Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women—in the eyes of him thou didst call thy husband—in the eyes of yonder child! And, that thou mayst live, take off this draught.” (pg.62)
Chillingworth wants Hester and Dimmesdale to be healthy as can be so that they will be able to go through with the punishment much as possible.
Ch.5: “On the outskirts of town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills toward the west.” (pg.68)
Hester lives in the same house he lived in, but instead of being some kind of explorer she seems like a foreigner .
Ch.5: “Children, too young to
