Monday, February 20, 2012
Symbolism in Scarlet Letter
This novel makes extensive use of symbols. Discuss the difference between the Puritans’ use of symbols (the meteor, for example) and the way that the narrator makes use of symbols. Do both have religious implications? Do symbols foreshadow events or simply comment on them after the fact? How do they help the characters understand their lives, and how do they help the reader understand Hawthorne’s book?
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Symbolism played a huge part in the puritan religion. Many of the stories in the Bible are in figretive or symbolic and that is were they get a lot of ideas from the stories in the bible. The book has symbolism that describes what is going on during the story to explain at a deeper level of what is going on in the book, for example when Hester and Pearl was going to the mannor house Pearl chased the children away that was going to fling mub at them, in a way she was protecting her mother, saying she was enduring enough pain from her that their was no need for any more.
ReplyDeleteThe Puritans in this book are always looking for symbols and they think they are messages from God, but they also have a hard time accepting what they really mean at times. They would rather give their own meaning to the symbols and form their own opinion. The meteor that was in the sky as Dimmesdale was standing on the scaffold an example. Dimmesdale and the townspeople thought the “A” that the meteor traces in the sky represents what they want to believe. To the minister, the meteor is identifying his sin, while the townspeople says that the colony’s former governor, who just died, has gone to heaven and been made an angel.
ReplyDeleteFor the narrator, the symbols in the book provide a purpose to cause difficulties in the truth rather than to prove one’s opinion of it. The governor’s garden, which Hester and Pearl see, illustrates his way quite well. The narrator does not describe the garden in a way that reinforces the picture of comfort and control that is in his description of the rest of the governor’s house. Rather, he writes that the garden, which was originally planted to look like an ornamental garden in the English style, is now full of weeds, thorns, and vegetables. The garden seems to disagree with much of what the reader has been told about the governor’s power and importance, and it suggests to us that the governor is an unfit caretaker, for people as well as for flowers. The lack of any flowers other than the thorny roses, also gives the idea that it is with evil and pain. The confusing symbol of the garden, gives us the reader an impression to look for more examples of decay and disorder in Puritan society.
Great answer about the garden Tina
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