Why is the Minister on the scaffold?

Finally, election day. The day that occurs but once a year, a day to celebrate. The festivities have been on going here in Boston since the wee hours of the morning. A band plays loudly in the town square and the crowd is joyous and loud. I can barely even hear myself think under the great tumultuous cloud of noise that bursts forth from the square.  I am standing toward the center of the crowd, the bodies press and sway amongst each other; a living wave of humanity. The sun gleams down in the most pleasant of ways amongst my company and a light breeze graces our warmed bodies. The day is new and good, this will surely be a good day. Very soon Minister Dimmesdale will climb the scaffold that is erected quite far from me and deliver this year’s election day sermon.

I am quite concerned about the Minister. He appears to be in failing health, and he has been for a number of years. There is some rumor that Doctor Chillingworth is some sort of catalyst behind this, but I find that doubtful. Speak of the devil, there is the Doctor now.

Chillingworth just pushed past me, hurriedly moving in the direction of the scaffold (225). I turn my direction to the scaffold and it appears as though I missed the Minister climbing it. The Doctor continues to push through the crowd, no doubt to talk to the Minister. The Doctor finally caught up to Dimmesdale and now they are talking. I cannot hear much because the band continues to play, but the Imp child of Mrs. Prynne embraces the Minister. Mrs. Prynne has also mounted the scaffold now. How very odd. The men closer to the scaffold, mostly men of the clergy, look very disturbed as Dimmesdale continues to talk. The band music has now slowly come to a halt and all eyes in Boston are fixed upon the edifice. Although the music has subsided, I still struggle to hear the Minister speak, but I know that it must be important. He holds Mrs. Prynne’s hand in his right hand and Pearl’s in the other. He most obviously must be announcing something appalling, our other leaders certainly look beside themselves (227).

“PEOPLE OF NEW ENGLAND!” shrieks the minister. Finally, I can hear his voice piercing through the ambient crowd sound. He begins to speak again with power, just as a cart rolls behind me. The rumbling is so loud that his voice is drowned out again. Much to my annoyance, I cannot hear him as he steps forward without assistance of his cane, and declares something important once again. I glare at the cart operator and turn my attention back to the scaffold.

And just as I do the minister rips off his cloak and ministerial band, and reveals “it” to the crowd (228).

Even at a distance I could see the a letter ‘A’ inscribed into his pale chest. It shone out, crimson like a freshly opened wound. It was so carved into his skin that its very shape is still carved into the forefront of my memory. The multitude Some of my fellow countrymen disagree with what the Minister revealed. Some maintain that there was nothing there, that he had just imagined it in his time of delusion and guilt. But I know what I saw. He was the accomplice in creating the Imp. And the Minister at that! Whatever he did (or did not) have on his chest, changed the entire town’s outlook on him. He was guilty. But so was Hester, and most of us knew the too as very good, God-fearing Puritans.

We all Sin that is for sure. And his Sin seemed to kill him. In the moments after he made his “Revelation”, fitting because it is the book of end times, the Minister collapsed and shortly died. I know not whether it was guilt or the freeing of his burden that killed him as some suggest, but I do believe that the cause may have been something much more sinister.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam, 1986. Print. Reissue 2003.

Dimmesdale, Reinvigorated

In my previous post, I discussed the thoroughly exhausted Dimmesdale on his walk through the forest. He was tired of the world and utterly lacking of any sort of drive. I want to compare this image we get of our “hero” in contrast to how we find Dimmesdale at the beginning of chapter 18.

On the bottom of page 179, Hawthorne says that Arthur looked at Hester with an expression of joy and hope, mixed with “horror” at her boldness. In the course of one conversation, Arthur goes from lost to found. When he and Hester decide to “run away,” it gives him a purpose. Suddenly the man who, until a few minutes ago, was sauntering on down the forest footpath, has been brought back from the land of the weary. His posture becomes better and a slight shadow of hope begins to spread itself in his brain. The shadow spreads until on page 182 he says, “Do I feel joy again? Methought the germ of it was dead in me! O Hester, thou art my better angel!” Dimmesdale, after 7+ years, can feel joy again! All it took was the reunification of the duo and the hope of a goal. The minister then wonders why they hadn’t come back together earlier by saying, “This is already the better life! Why did we not find it sooner?”(182)

For a moment, Arthur’s life force has returned. For a moment, he throws off the guilt that the weight of his vocation has placed upon him. And in the metaphorical throwing off of his burden, Hester removes the scarlet letter that has adorned her chest during the last few years. Together they remove their social stigmas, self imposed or otherwise, and for a moment they are happy.

Of course this seeming fairy tale ending is dashed against the rocks of plot development,  but for a few minutes they duo was able to be happy and maybe that is all Dimmesdale needed to be fully reinvigorated; to lift him up from the forest floor with its decomposing leaves and footpaths. In two chapters Dimmesdale metamorphosed from a broken, shame-filled minister to a joyful, love-filled man of God. And maybe that’s what this chapter is trying to say, we all need a lil’ love.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam, 1986. Print. Reissue 2003.

The Weariness of Minister Dimmesdale

I’ve gotta be honest. I’m struggling with this book. I love this project, but Hawthorne’s flowery language is slowing me down. Couple that with a week of absences due to an awesome TV convention and you get a blogger who is trapped in between a rock and a hard place. But in chapter 16 something just grabbed my attention: the description of Dimmesdale walking down the beaten path.

In the chapters leading up to 16, we see Dimmesdale suffer under the weight of his own sin, and the encouragement of Chillingworth. Chillingworth prodded Dimmesdale down the road of insanity to the point that the minister saw almost no point in living. He felt so guilty because of this, and because of the bright red A that was seared into his flesh.  As the minister walks down the footpath in the forest, Hawthorne describes him in one paragraph, and it is quite vivid and chilling.

The paragraph begins on page 170 by stating that the “elf-child” has departed, and Hester settled herself into the “deep shadow of the trees.” As Hester stood, Dimmesdale came down the path with a “nervous despondency.” Hawthorne notes that his despondency was barely noticeable , but in the quiet and secluded forest, it was far more pronounced. He was “haggard and feeble”, meaning that we can infer that he was probably slumped over, his shoulders dipping one side to the other with each footfall. Dimmesdale also used a walking stick that “he had cut by the wayside” to aid him in his slow walk. Hawthorne then says that, “There was a listlessness in his gait; as if he saw no reason for taking one step farther, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive, for evermore.” I think that this line is the most telling part of Dimmesdale’s character at that time. He is just…existing. For no reason other than the fact that he was, and he wanted to give up on movement, to lie dormant forever. It wasn’t that Dimmesdale wanted to die, or to kill himself, but he just simply wanted to cease whatever he was doing in his life, but he cared too little to actually stop himself. Hawthorne continues this description by saying, “Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.” Poor Dimmesdale is lost. Not in a literal sense, I am sure he was completely aware of his location whilst walking through the forest, but he was too confused and lost in his own depression and guilt to even make himself decide to want death. He just didn’t care.

And its not until the events of the next few chapters that he gets pulled out of this funk, and finds himself.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam, 1986. Print. Reissue 2003.

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Chilling’s Worth ( Or Chillingworth’s Chilling Worth)

Roger Chillingworth is a bad man, and chapters nine through twelve affirm that. In chapter nine, the narrator implicates Chillingworth in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in the footnotes on page 116. Overbury was a famous English essayist whose mysterious murder lead to a scandalous trial in 1613. Chillingworth disappeared during the trial, changing his real name to Chillingworth and traveling throughout America. At some point he met and married Hester, after having learned from the Native peoples of America, and sent her ahead to settle in Boston. This is why in the first chapter Hester sees him walk into town with a Native at his side, and he puts a finger to his lips.

Hawthorne implies on page 116 that Chillingworth learned dark arts/ witchcraft from the Natives. He uses these skills on Dimmesdale when he has a hunch that he was the adulterer. Poor Dimmesdale who is tortured by his grief and remorse because of his sin, is only made worse by the nefarious practices of the “good” doctor Chillingworth. On page 126 when Chillingworth finds a symbol burned into Dimmesdale’s breast, he is reassured in his plot for revenge. Here is the man who stole his wife from him, sitting asleep in front of him, malleable and weak. Chillingworth acts as a catalyst for Dimmesdale’s descent into madness and ultimately encourages the process.

I’m not sure if Hester knew what she was getting into when she married Chillingworth. Perhaps she assumed that his façade of kindness and righteousness was genuine, and perhaps she didn’t know of his implication with the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, but one thing is certain. On that fateful day, as Hester mounted the scaffold to see her husband standing behind the crowd, she knew something bad was coming. It can be assumed that as Chillingworth changed from a genuine face to that of a cruel old man just in the time that he inhabited the village, surely the mask that he wore when he initially met Hester melted away in time. When Hester saw her husband, she had to assume the worst, especially as he wanted in no way to be associated with his cheating wife.

I predict that as the book continues, Chillingworth will only grow more evil. I think that perhaps he will become a symbol of true evil in the story: hell hath no fury like a manipulative, blood-thirsty man, scorned.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam, 1986. Print. Reissue 2003.

A Letter to Pearl, the Imp

Dear Pearl,

This really isn’t quite fair is it? You’ve been born and raised in a town that hates you for your very existence. You are the secondary mark of a sinful woman, your mother. Every time you laugh and giggle, the entire town cringes because you remind them of their own sin. None of this is your fault, and yet you bear the majority of the burden. You came into the world as a byproduct of “the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion” from long ago(81). And there is nothing you can do about it.

At this time you are about three years old, so I expect that Hester will have to read this to you. But even if you cannot read as of yet, you are still incredibly sharp. You have never known a father because yours wanted to stay away. Your mother’s first act of defiance was to keep him unnamed. Fatherlessness is all you have ever known, which is why you declared that you have no “heavenly father” either. Because of your intelligence and bastardy, the people of Salem have begun to call you an imp. I do not know if you fully understand this, but the people view you as the devil incarnate. You represent the “darkness” that they all recognize inside of themselves and refuse to acknowledge. And that is why they hate you. The wholly unpleasant and not unsubstantial, matronly judges of the town curse you and hate you because you bring beauty to your mother, the sinner. She is marked with more than the letter “A”, she is marked by you. Of course, you have begun to encourage to townspeople in their insults. In later years you will dance upon headstones and even throw a weed at a certain Reverend (122).

Oh Pearl, you sweet and misunderstood girl. You bring beauty into your mother’s life while exasperating her at the same time. You may never know your father, but you do have your mother, and I pray that you will take solace with her.

God Speed,

Nathan S.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam, 1986. Print. Reissue 2003.

The Characterization of Hester Prynne in chapters one through four

As I began to read The Scarlet Letter, the first thing that caught my attention was the characterization of Hester Prynne. Hester, who I assume is the protagonist of the story based on the fact that she wears the scarlet letter, is first introduced in the novel as the crosses the threshold of the town prison. It is what she does after being drawn across the threshold that first caught my attention.

After the “town-beadle” pulls Hester across the threshold, she “repels” him (50). This simple act of pushing his hand aside speaks volumes about Hester without directly stating anything about her character. Due to our background knowledge, we know that Hester is living in Puritanical Salem. Women in any puritan society had fewer rights than men. Hester’s act of repulsion is an act of defiance. She pushes away the her captor’s hands and emerges into the open air “as if by her own free will” (50). I find it interesting that Nathaniel Hawthorne chose this act as the first device by which he would describe Hester. Despite his rich and descriptive language, which he is all too happy to use while describing the character that adorns her blouse, he uses one simplistic act to describe Hester. She pushes away the hand of a man and walks out of the prison, refusing to be guided–Hawthorne describes this as a force of character. This is the first example of indirect characterization of Hester in the novel; and it suggests to me that Hester is a strong and independent young woman.

Farther down page 50, Hawthorne directly characterizes her. “The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes” (50). In these two complex sentences, the author paints a rather vivid picture of our assumed heroine. She is a beautiful specimen in a town full of “not unsubstantial persons” (47). I believe that Hawthorne has made Hester beautiful to make a commentary on the nature of sin itself. Even though Hester has committed the crime of adultery, she is still more outwardly, and inwardly, beautiful. This is in direct contrast to the “righteous” woman of the town who fully abide by the laws, and yet they are described as rather ugly. Hawthorne is trying to show that Hester is still a beautiful person, despite her adultery. And maybe, Hawthorne is providing a commentary on the rigidity of the Puritan community and how unaccepting they are of a sinner like themselves.

As the exposition of the book begins, so does Hester’s characterization. Hawthorne gives quite a lot of information about her in the first four chapters, and yet it is not quite enough. The rest of the book will assuredly fill in the gaps; we do not know her full character yet. Hawthorne laid the skeleton in these first few chapters, and he’ll flesh it out as the book continues.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam, 1986. Print. Reissue 2003.

The Year 1850 and Dark Romanticism

Nathan Simms

Cameratologist

I used to like to read. I read every single day; sometimes I would skip school and just read all day. As my time has been incrementally filled with more and more school work, the time that I used to set aside for reading has all but evaporated entirely. When my English teacher introduced The Scarlet Letter to my Honors English class, I groaned internally. Thus far, I have enjoyed most of the required reading in school, but The Scarlet Letter has always been the novel that vast majority of my senior peers have whined about. And then we were slammed with a blog assignment. This blog is intended to be informal as well as informative and professional. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m fairly decent at writing essays. This blog is most definitely not an essay. This journal-esque form of writing is much more challenging than I initially thought. That being said, I’ll certainly do my darndest.

To alleviate some of my stress toward this assignment, I’ve  taken it upon myself to research how the year 1850 influenced the reception the novel, as well as the literary period/movement to which Nathaniel Hawthorne belonged.

To start, 1850 was a year of turmoil in the US. Millard Fillmore took office in July after President Taylor unexpectedly fell ill, passing away just five days later (Freidel and Sidey). The rest of the year was filled with debates over the one of the main issues in our nation: slavery. These debates were particularly focused around the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. To preface, slavery is bad. Like really bad (Nathan Simms). If anyone tries to tell you, “Maybe a few slave states in America really wouldn’t be that bad,” I urge you to reconsider your relationship with that person. In this day and age, that type of mindset is justly rejected. However in 1850, that was exactly the mindset of many Americans below the 36°30′ line of latitude. It was the opinion of many that we needed to allow the states below the line (with the exception of Missouri) to be slave states (Noll). The Compromise of 1850 argued another method of divvying up “free” and “slave” states, but ultimately was rendered inert by the Missouri Compromise–although it did play a big part in preserving the union for another few years.

So as I am sure you can see, The Scarlet Letter was published into a time of political discussion and incrementally rising tempers. 1850 was a year of discussion just on the brink of the Civil War. 1850 also falls into the Romantic Period of American literature. The Romantic Period spanned from 1800-1860, and The Scarlet Letter belongs to this period. More specifically, it belongs to the Dark Romantic movement (Carrol). In addition to Hawthorne, the authors Poe and Melville also belong to this movement. The Dark Romantic movement is widely characterized with three key ideas: unsettling symbolism, horrific themes, and the psychological effects of guilt and sin. Hand in hand with Dark Romanticism came Anti-Transcendentalism. In fact the two are so intertwined that they are sometimes used synonymously. Transcendentalism was the belief that if one observes nature and society, that a perfect type of society can be achievable (“Transcendentalism”). Obviously, the Anti-Transcendentalists wanted to show that a society like this was absolutely not achievable, and used writing to bring up the darker parts of human society.

The movements at this time were certainly more dark than any previous American literary movements, and they certainly have left an impact on us. The Scarlet Letter  is considered an American classic, and many other works of the time are also held in high esteem. In a time of American turmoil, they sought to make the hoi polloi of America to question themselves and society as a whole, which is quite certainly a lot more than I can say about the vast majority of today’s media content.

My hope is that I can work my way through this novel without griping liking my peers, and that I’ll be able to enjoy it despite my workload. Who knows, maybe this platform of self expression will rekindle my love of reading; only time will tell.

Works Cited

Carrol, Heather. “The Dark Romantics in American Literature.” Education Portal. Education Portal, n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

Freidel, Frank, and Hugh Sidey. “Millard Fillmore.” The White House. The White House, 2006. Web. 19 Feb. 2015.

Noll, Mark. AP US History Notes, 2015.

Simms, Nathan. Opinion, 2015.

“Transcendentalism, An American Philosophy.” Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.