Chapter 20-24

Hope and doubt. Death and life. New life and the continuation of old. All of these themes are presented in the final five chapters of the Scarlet Letter.

I find it humorous that Pearl is now enthralled with the reverend when he appears so happy and light, like her. After seeing him this way she offers to go and kiss him, but Hester doesn't allow it. It is funny that Hester dares not give away the secrete before their departure, yet Dimmesdale leads them up onto the platform an hour later. Together the family (kinda) ascends the steps of the platform, along with the Roger Chillingworth, the evil caretaker and servant of the good reverend. Here, they are judged by all the members of the community. Funny that their judgement day is also election day. For one there is the power of choice, the other is predetermined.

On this platform of humility Dimmesdale dies, in a sense, the same way that Hester died 7 years past. However, this time he no longer hides in the shadows of guilt and cowardice. Hester and he share this common location of evil and shame and death, and later, they again share the same ground in the cemetery. In the first chapter the author writes that both a prison and a cemetery are essential to any town, meaning that every life commits crimes and later dies. Yet Dimmesdale was never imprisoned in a jail, he had to serve his sentence in the confinement and service of the church and his religious duties.

Pearl finds a new life. She goes to England with her mother. The reader is able to infer that she marries and starts a family, she starts her own original life away from America. Yet Hester returns, and continues to wear the Scarlet Letter. This A has become more a part of her than her own daughter. This symbol is permanent upon her, and she decides to live the rest of her life repenting for the sin she committed long ago. I believe that she feels guilty for the murder she commenced in her former lover, and the revenge that she doomed upon her husband, and for the life that she never had, along with happiness. She lived with a hopeless love in her heart, a love that she only expressed twice, once in the darkness of night and another in the shadow of the forest. Hester returned to America to continue her marked life because of this hopeless, ugly love that was trapped within her. To her, the A could have meant Always.

9A
Always An Able Atheist Angel Against Adultery And Anger. :) (that was just for fun)

Chapter 16-19

It's about time. Finally Hester and Dimmesdale speak to each other! And, the reader is able to see that they are still in love. After 7 years their hearts are still longing for each other. This novel can turn into a sappy love story yet.

Hester's seven years of service have given her many gifts along with its punishment. One of these gifts is the ability to think outside of common thought. Hester doesn't obey the guidelines of society and follow its narrow-mindedness. She speaks what is on her mind with the courage she has found in solitude. Alone in her world with only Pearl she is no longer a victim of the common ordinances of her community. In the wild, in the forests of freedom, Hester and Pearl live to survive, the same as any wild animal. In these chapters, Hester is able to express her courage and creativity without bounds to the minister, who is still held within the grasp of the civilized, limiting society. Dimmesdale is afraid to run because he is chained to the town and the church, no longer able to fathom the idea of wandering away from his home of guilt and sin.

A main conflict in the last chapter falls between Dimmesdale and Pearl. Pearl sees Dimmesdale as the Black Man who has come to put his mark on her, no longer allowing the sun to shine upon her. It seems that Pearl is a mix between an angel and an archangel. Pearl is so beautiful, yet acts more evil than an average naughty child. Hester states that Pearl doesn't transition well with change, as is Pearl is stuck inside her own little shell where she is safe and comfortable. With this comfort there comes a challenge. Pearl will probably make Hester choose between herself, Hester's only daughter, and Dimmesdale, Hester's love and freedom. If so, who will she choose? Each have their loving qualities, but also contain a darkness of sin.

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.

Chapter 8-11

Sin is everywhere, it surrounds us and envelopes us. Yet we are fast to find the sin of others and not ourselves. Reverend Dimmesdale suffers both physically, emotionally, and spiritually because of his adulterous sin with Hester Prynne. He continually clutches his aching heart, his black heart. In LLP, it explains that a condition of the heart metaphors the character's personality or reveals a flaw in the character's nature. With Dimmesdale, his physical pain is a result of his concealed sin. Dimmesdale is letting his sin slowly engulf him, suffocating him from the air of freedom and life. Spiritually, Dimmesdale believes that God is letting him die because he is no longer worthy to tread the ground of Earth. He thinks that to confess his sin he will condemn his soul but continue to live, seeking forgiveness and feeling public humility every day, the same as Hester Prynne. Ironically, the spiritual Dimmesdale is conflicted with the scientific Mr. Chillingworth, who wishes to exploit the adulterous companion of his former wife, Hester Prynne. Chillingworth's herbs and medicine add to Dimmesdale's complications; he must decide whether to wander off the righteous path of strict religion to attempt to ease his suffering by the use of nature instead of God's forgiveness.

What causes Dimmesdale to keep this secrete hidden? He bears the scarlet letter in his chest as a decrepit heart and externally with a pale and slimming figure, yet he won't confess. Even the sound of Pearl must make Dimmesdale's entire body ache, let alone the sight of the young child throwing continuous shame upon the chest of her mother. Dimmesdale's denied confession is his own doing with a simple answer. He has had several chances to reveal himself but cannot find the courage in his cowardice guilt. He doesn't want to loose his position to uphold religious leadership, but in return he will loose his life.

Chapter 5-7

Hester is an outcast of society, both spiritually and physically. She is the lone sinner in this Puritan world, the single condemned soul that wonders the streets. Hester and her scarlet letter, both cloth and blood, accompany her where-ever she goes; they are a dark shadow of guilt on her conscious. The scarlet letter burns on her chest; it creates not a scar, but an open soar that is continuously being pestered. Hester is the scapegoat for all the so-called non-sinners in the community. She alone has taken the fall from paradise to this wretched state of hopelessness and anguish. However, even in such a sinful heart and sinful hands beauty can be made. Hester has a gift of crafting spectacular apparel by the use of her needle. It is a skill that the community appreciates and uses, since her wondrous outfits have become the standard that no others can reach.

Hester now lives in the woods with her baby, Pearl. "Pearl: a gem of the sea" Yet Hester refers to the child as an evil elf. Is she truly evil, or is Pearl just a free spirit? Is Pearl actually the scarlet letter in blood and flesh, the physical form of her parents sin and damnation? I do not see Pearl as a devil child, but as a youngster lashing out at the hypocritical world that has condemned her and her mother. Pearl wishes to express herself freely in a world that has backed her into a corner and thrown a defining collar upon her helpless neck.

Chapter 2-4

Puritans, the pure of spirit, mind, and body. Pure they are, yet only deceiving. These people wear a mask as a criminal at court. They are no more holy or righteous than you or I. These so-called Puritans hide in their churches of sinful religion, damning all others who live outside this pure path. But they are not the only ones. It is easy to see the flaws and point out the wrong-doings of such a society, yet today the world is no different. Today we criticize other religions and races for their customs. How do we know that their customs are less correct and righteous than our own? Take religions for example: How does anyone know what is the correct belief when each individual religion deems itself as the single ruler of the spirit? We can never be sure. Therefore, there must be flaws in each and every aspect of humanity, with no set right or wrong, just different variations. Is there really a Christ as the Christian community believes, or is Islam or Hinduism the accurate perception of history? No-one will ever know. Maybe there is not one single ruler of the human universe, but several separate gods and goddesses, as the Greeks and Native Americans thought. So how can one group of people see themselves as dominant over another? They cannot. There is no such thing as a Puritan society, no matter if it is named so.

Irony trumps everything. Ironic that Hester Prynne's husband appears from the wilderness at the same time that she is set upon the stage of grief and mockery. Also, ironic that her former love and caregiver is the physician that is brought in to care for Hester and her newborn child, a child that should be his own. Hester fears that her former husband will try to poison her or her baby with his treatments, yet he already has. He had killed them both long ago when he was presumed dead, abondaning them in this new world filled with opportunity and destruction. However, with his potions he has saved them, yet only phyically. The scars on Hester Prynne's life will never cease, and her child's soul will fester forever because of the wrong-doings of her mother, father, and Mr. Prynne.

The Custom House & Chapter 1

"It is a good lesson--though it may be a hard one--for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves and all he aims at."

Wow. How true is this? What do our personal goals really mean to the world? The answer: Nothing. Each of our dreams, goals, loves, and hopes are but another flake of snow upon this earth. Some shall last forever, some only seconds. Some hopes will be recycled, thawed by spring's warming life, enabling it to quench the thirst of moral fiber; while others vanish, or sometimes, will become polluted by all the impurities of humanity and its sinful ways of nature. Goals and aspirations are unique for each individual, yet sometimes the basics of an aspiration allow for the grouping of separate people into the 'clicks' of clubs and teams and circles striving toward their common factor. Yet how meaningless such goals are outside these clicks, out in the real world--which some argue doesn't exist, that the world is simple what someone makes of it--that forages on the meat of raw ambition and hopeless hope.

It is ironic that Hawthorne writes that this lesson is a "hard one." Is this not so with many of life's most important lessons? Friendship, love, life, death; all of these are harsh lessons at times that abuse the learner, forcing that person to stare directly into the eye of difficulty and defeat knowing not what will become of them, only that there is a lesson to be learned. The most thorough lessons in life are the ones that collapse the ground from underneath the foot. At these times it is a decision to stand again on a lower pedestal or to slide apathetically into the lifeless home of darkness.

The narrator of The Custom House is looking for fame. However, fame is like control, an allusion of the senses, a shadow that is held for only a second before eluding the eternal grasp of its demise. Fame is a mindset, and how happy everyone would be is they all could simply be famous to themselves.