Difficulty Paper

I never had to read the Scarlet Letter in high school so when I began to read the book I wasn't expecting the book to be written in Old English. It was hard to get used to at first because of the way they talked in this era. Nathaniel Hawthorne's style of writing is very different from what I'm used to. Whenever there was something I didn't understand in the text I would look up a word I didn't understand, or use context clues to figure out what was being said in the novel. A lot of times I had to go back and re-read a page or paragraph to understand what was taking place in the story.When I began to read the book I didn't really catch onto most of the symbolism in the book. After we discussed symbolism, the characters, and certain occurrances in the novel (in class) I had a better understanding of what was really happening in the story and why it was happening. Hawthorne has an interesting way of using symbolism in his stories. As I read The Scarlet Letter I noticed it was sort of similar to Hawthorne's short storyYoung Goodman Brown, regarding symbolism, the Puritan society, and a few "dark characters". Once I began to notice the symbolism in the story more it made the book more interesting to read and gave the setting, the characters, and occurrances more meaning. Such as Hester having to wear the letter "A" on her clothing everyday.

"On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter ‘A.’ It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony."

The "A" symbolized her sin of adultry, later in the story Hester changes the meaning of the letter "A" by all of her hard work and charity, the meaning was soon known to be "able". It seemed as if Hester was proud to wear the letter "A" on her clothing, it was as if it empowered her character, it set her apart from the rest of the women in this Puritan society she lived in. I think because Hester had to wear the letter "A" everyday it opened her eyes as to how cruel the Puritan townspeople could be, it was as if she was now an outsider looking in on the Puritan society and laws.