Chapter 12-15

I have to laugh at the irony. 'Pearl' is sent to play along the seashore, a place that she most naturally fits. In this scene, while Hester visits with Rodger Chillingworth, Pearl explores the beach. Pearl, in a pool of water left by the tide, seeks "a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky." Yet she is disappointed, and soon realizes that either herself or the image that she has been pondering is "unreal." Pearl is neither on earth or above it. She is a physical spirit that merely skims the surface of this earthly place.

Later in her adventures of the beach Pearl throws rocks at a seabird on the beach and believes that she has broken its wing. Pearl feels sorrow because of the harm that she has caused the bird. Flight = Freedom, and now Pearl has taken away the freedom of this bird, the same way that her mother, her birth, has taken Pearl's freedom of spirit and transformed it into a physical form. Pearl still "sets lightly upon the ground," but is none the less denied the full freedom that she symbolizes.

The letter "A" is a common occurrence in these chapters. Of course, it is always seen on the breast of Hester Prynne, symbolizing Adultry. It is also seen in the physical form of Pearl, the child of adultry in living form. Then the "A" is seen in the form of a zenith in the night sky, lighting up the dark into the dawn of day. The zenith is in the form of a scarlet "A" that some of the colonists take to mean "Angel," but Reverend Dimmesdale knows that it is a reflection of the hidden "A" on his chest in the sky of heaven. The last "A" is seen on Pearl's breast, formed from seaweed that she has drapped around herself. This green "A" no longer represents Adultry, but nature and the natural sin that is born on earth and rejoiced by the sinners of everyday life. The letter "A" has come to mean more than just Adultry. It has brought help and comfort to the poor, wondrous sermons to Dimmesdalel's congregation, and the future a seven-year-old girl named Pearl.