A Token of Sin or Saint
——Book report on The Scarlet Letter
外国语学院
科技英语（1）班
吕秀琴
200730451422
The Scarlet Letter was a renown novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and was published in 1850, the year in which the Compromise avoided the American Civil War for four years. This novel is famous for its plain yet philosophic language, which is inspiring even in modern times.
The story takes place during 1642 to 1649. Hester Prynne, a woman who is taken in adultery, is forced to wear a token—the scarlet letter A on her chest for all to see by Puritans in Boston. She refuses to reveal her lover’s name, because the man is the Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale who is well respected and considered a saint in the town. Hester doesn’t want to ruin his reputation, so she raises their “evil” child Pearl all by herself in spite that she is deserted by the whole town. Being a Puritan, Mr. Dimmesdale blames him for making such a huge mistake. But he doesn’t have the courage to tell people the truth, he just let the sin tortures his faint body. Meanwhile, Hester’s husband who now calls himself Roger Chillingworth once was a well educated scholar now becomes a leech. He plots a revenge on her wife’s lover. Roger later becomes the doctor of Mr. Dimmesdale. Roger gives motherly care to the young clergyman everyday. However, Roger finds out that Mr. Dimmesdale is her wife’s lover, instead of killing him, he keeps his patient alive. Because he knows that the sin tortures the clergyman so bad that he’d rather die than live. Without knowing who the leech really is, he sees Roger as his friend. Hester can’t stand it anymore, so she tells Mr. Dimmesdale all that he needs to know and encourages him that they leave the town and start a new life. The weak clergyman agrees, but he doesn’t want to leave at once, he wants to preach the Election Sermon, as “such an occasion formed an honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career.” After he finishes preaching the Election Sermon, instead of leaving with Hester, he asks Hester and Pearl to get on the scaffold, three of them hand in hand, the young clergyman finally has the courage to confess his sin, after which, he died in peace, leaving the multitude breaking out the voice of awe and wonder.
When reading this novel, you will easily find that the author used figures of speech so naturally that they help to express certain ideas. Firstly, simile appears most frequently in the novel. When describing Hester’s feeling when she was hiding her lover’s secret, the novel says “It might be, too-doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole-it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal.” When the author tried to express Roger was greedy to find out the secret in Mr. Dimmesdale’s heart, he used the sentence below. “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 everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern.” Again, the author compared Roger with a sexton delving into a grave by writing “He now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these were what he sought!”
Secondly, Metaphor is used wildly as well. When Mr. Dimmesdale tries to express the idea that he is weak while Hester is strong, he uses metaphor by saying “thou tallest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must die here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone!” And when Mr. Dimmesdale decides to leave the town with Hester and Pearl, his heart is as light as a feather，just as a prisoner escaped from the dungeon. In the novel, the author wrote like this “The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the exhilarating effect—upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own heart- of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an unredeemed, unchristianised, lawless region. His spirit rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept him groveling on the earth.”
Thirdly, parallelism can be found when people disdain Hester. “Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast-at her, the child of honorable parents-at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman-at her, who had once been innocent-as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.” So is said in the novel.
Besides parallelism, euphemism is also used when the novel tried to describe how hard Hester’s life is in this angry town. Instead of describing how people maltreat her soul directly, the novel says “Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, where accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer’s defenseless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound.”
What’s more, repetition has not been neglected. “I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood—I , who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communication, in your behalf, with the Most High Omniscience—I, in whose daily life you discern the sanctity of Enoch—I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided to the regions of the blest—I, who have laid the hand of baptism upon your children—I, who have breathed the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted—I, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!”
At the ending of the novel, we can also see contrast between the glorious clergyman and the sinful woman. “And now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne had encountered the world’s ignominious stares. There stood Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand! And there was the scarlet letter on her breast! The minister here made a pause; although the music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which the procession moved. It summoned him onward-onward to the festival!-but here he made a pause.”
After reading the whole novel, three things came to my mind. First and foremost, don’t judge a person by the token. There’s no doubt that Hester is a sinful person, but she is brave enough to admit it and afford the desertion and discrimination after she wears the scarlet letter A. The token is the first letter of adultery. People even averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. “Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the door-way, or laboring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led town ward; and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagious fear.” But she is strong through all the suffering. “She compelled herself to believe-what, finally, she reasoned upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of New England-was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would be length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.” Her daughter Pearl is the only support in her life. She names the infant “Pearl,” as being of great price- purchased with all she had-her mother’s only treasure. She earns the living by sewing especially for people with power and status. And she also helps people who are poor. But those people don’t treat her as nicely as she deserves, she doesn’t mind. As the novel describes “It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In this matter for Hester Prynne, there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the public, but submitted, uncomplainingly, to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it, in requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity of her life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned largely in her favor. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.” Years later, people finally change their mind, they begin to accept Hester. “Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. “Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?” they would say to strangers. “It is our Hester- the town’s own Hester- who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!” It was one the less a fact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun’s bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, but fell harmless to the ground.” It is Hester that bares all the public response. It is a woman that raises the infant. It is a female that hides all the secrets in order to defend her true love. Woman, thy name is not frailty.
Besides, what we see and what we hear may trick us, use your heart to feel. As to the truth, only time will tell. Hester is a sinful woman, but she admits her sin and tries her best to penance. As Clare Boothe Luce said “Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.” Hester seems the most evil person in the town, but it turns out that she is kind hearted. All her mistake is meeting a right person in a wrong timing. Roger is a learnt physician who seems to have helped numerous patients, but indeed an evil-to-be seeking revenge. “All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.” Roger errors by interest. Due to his ruined reputation, he seeks every means to find out who the lover of her wife is. The process is how he turns himself from a well educated scholar to an evil. “In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office. This unhappy person had effected such a transformation, by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated over.” This is how the novel says. Let’s get a closer look at Mr. Dimmesdale. He is a well-respected clergyman in town. The whole town never doubts that he is the purest person. The multitude doesn’t know that he is the lover of Hester, the most sinful woman, until he spells out the truth before he dies. He has been tortured by the secret when he is alive. “Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders; laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast, - not, however, like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination, - but rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with a glimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify, himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes that grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother, turning her face away as she passed by.” A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.
Last but not least, honesty is the best policy. You may hide the secret in your heart, but people will find out one day, and the longer you hide it, the more torture you get. Mr. Dimmesdale is the best example. “Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders; laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast, - not, however, like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination, - but rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with a glimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify, himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes that grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother, turning her face away as she passed by.” Fame is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent. So is said by Nicolas Chamfort. The more famous one is, the less he wants to confess. Mr. Dimmesdale doesn’t want to suffer from people’s desertion, so he’d rather stand the torture until he dies. Once he confesses, he dies in delight because he is free from the torture. Be honest. “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
We tend to tell everything right from wrong. However, things are much more sophisticated. Is the scarlet letter a token of sin or saint? It’s hard for people to decide. “Morality is not really the doctrine of how to make ourselves happy but of how we are to be worthy of happiness.” Before wearing the token, she is a sinful person. But after she wears it, she acts like a saint. We can’t judge a person all by our eyes or ears. Use your heart and feel. The inspiring language and plots makes the novel not only for one age, but for all time.