Scarlet Letter
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The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is an American classic. Set in the 1640's in the puritan colonies, this allegory (story meant to be read on a symbolic level) tells the story of seven years of ostracism of a young woman, Hester Prynne. She is an adulteress who has nothing but her precious Pearl to keep her company. Her paramour, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is eventually driven to confession after seven yeas of self-torture. Not knowing that Hester's real husband, Roger Chillingworth, is living with him, trying to get revenge, Dimmesdale's methods of torture wear him down until he has life in him only to confess. Hawthorne's use of symbolism conveys the importance of truth through the scaffold.
The scaffold can show the truth in many ways. One way is because that is where Hester stood for all to see her scarlet letter and her baby, Pearl, that was born of Hester's sin. As Roger Chillingworth said "There was no place so secret, no high place nor lowly place that thou couldst have escaped me, save on this very scaffold!" He says this to Arthur Dimmesdale, meaning, that the secret could have never escaped from him unless he was on the scaffold...