THE SCARLET LETTER

CHAPTER 2 and 3AWESOME PASSAGES!

Chapter 2• 47 – “The grass plot… death itself” – What does

this paragraph say about the scene unfolding?• 48 – The Puritan women “Let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will always be in her heart.” While Hester is subject to intense public ignominy in the Puritan square, her true suffering may be internal, as “the pang of it will always be in her heart” (Hawthorne 49).

Pg. 49-50

VERY IMPORTANT PASSAGE ALERT!

“Stretching forth... free will.”

More on Hester…

• Pg. 50 – “When the young woman… colony.”

• SPEHERES, SPHERES, EVERYWHERE A SPHERE!

• Pg. 51 – “Not a stitch…” – NOTE: Passage connections apply here.

• Pg. 52 – “haughty as her demeanor was…trample upon.”

• SCAFFOLD SCENE #1

CHAPTER 3• 57, 61, 62

• Let’s take a look at Rev. Dimmesdale • I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO START AND

STOP WITH THESE AWESOME PASSAGES!!!!• Final sentence of Ch. 3

CHAPTER 4 – The Interview

• 65 – “drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom”

• 68 – “It may be less soothing…sea.” ***AWESOME PASSAGE ALERT***

THIS ENTIRE PAGE IS AWESOME (Hester, Chillingworth, the sin… intense stuff!) * 69 – Chillingworth admits his own role in this sin

Evaluate Roger Chillingworth

• We see a lot about Chillingworth in this chapter.

• Do you sympathize with him? • What qualities do we see in him throughout

chapter 4?

CHAPTER 5

• 73 – “She could no longer borrow…only monument.” – Hester’s new reality

• “The chain that bound her here was of iron links… but could never be broken” (74).

• Evaluate Hester’s decision to stay in Boston, and examine the details of her cottage. What do we learn here?

• 77- - Evaluate the difference between Hester’s clothes and Pearl’s clothes.

• “In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it” (77).

CHAPTER 6 - Pearl

• “a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion” (81)

• Evaluate and assess Pearl. What does she represent? What are we to make of her?

• Find passages throughout chapter 6 that support your responses.

AWESOME PASSAGE ALERT!86-87

“At home…wild energy.”

• Interpret the final page of the chapter.

The Scarlet Letter

Key Reading PointsChapters 7-9

Awesome Passage

• Pg. 92 – “…it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other – Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cottage.”

Ch. 7: Pg. 92 - PearlThere was fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child’s garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play; arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread….It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life! The mother herself—as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain, that all her conceptions assumed its form—had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between the object of her affection, and the emblem of her guilt and torture.

Can you . . . • 1) Paraphrase Hawthorne’s words on pg.

119?• 2) Make any connections with

Transcendentalist philosophy?• 3) Examine what we are seeing here with

Hester? Pearl?

Emergence of a MotifCh. 7 - Pg. 94

• “No, my little Pearl!” said her mother. “Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee!”

Light/Dark imagery abounds in The Scarlet Letter. What are the implications of this statement Hester makes about sun? Can you infer how Hawthorne will use Light/Dark imagery going forward?

The Governor’s HallCh. 7- Pg. 95

• Hester’s strength as she arrives at the Governor’s mansion

Pg. 97

• Reflection of the A in the armor. • What is Hawthorne going for here?

Pg. 97

• Discuss the vegetation growing outside of Bellingham’s window.

Chapter 8

Ch. 8- Pg. 99• “…in close companionship with him, old Roger Chillingworth,

a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or three years, past had been settled in the town. It was understood that this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral relation.”

• We should be able to make some inferences from this interesting set of details. What do you make of this passage?

Ch. 8- Pg. 102“Old Roger Chillingworth”

• “Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,—how much uglier they were,—how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen,—since the days when she had familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now going forward.”

• What is happening to Chillingworth? (Level 1)• What insight in to mankind is Hawthorne evincing? (Level 2)• READ CLOSELY WHENEVER YOU ARE PRESENTED WITH

DETAILS OF CHILLINGWORTH’S ACTIONS, WORDS, or APPEARANCE.

Pg. 103

• Hester’s plea to keep Pearl• “God gave her into my keeping… I will not give

her up.”• ASSESS HESTER’S COMMENTS HERE

• Hester’s plea to Dimmesdale• What is implicit in this passage?

• Assess Dimmesdale’s change in appearance.

Ch. 8 – Pg. 108

• “You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness,” said old Roger Chillingworth, smiling at him.”

• Your thoughts???

• Pg. 110 - What do you make of Mistress Hibbins?

Chapter 9 – The LeechPg. 111

• “Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interest, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him. This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.”

• Explicate this passage. Infer what Chillingworth’s role is becoming both in terms of plot and theme.

Ch. 9- Pg. 113Dimmesdale in decay

• “His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.”

• Read and think deeply here. Explicate the details of this passage.

Ch. 9 – Pg. 116-117• “He deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before

attempting to do him good. Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there. So Roger Chillingworth—the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician—strove to go deep into his patient’s bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing every thing with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. “

• Hawthorne is pretty clear here – what is going on?

Chapter 12-13

Ch. 12 – Scaffold Scene #2 MidnightHester, Dimmesdale, PearlBellingham, Hibbins, WilsonChillingworth

Superstitions

Light and Dark

“Wilt thou stand with us at noontide?”

Chapter 13 – Another View of Hester

• Pg. 145 – “Hester saw, or seemed to see… obligations.”

• Pg. 145 – “As is apt…than it hates.”• Pg. 146 – “They said that it meant Able.”• Pg. 147 – “Our Hester”• KEY DISCUSSION POINT – Pg. 150 – “The

scarlet letter had not done its office.”