History Background!!!

Puritans first came to America to establish a colony in Massachusetts Bay. They came over to America as members of the England church even though their beliefs differed from those of the Kings. They wanted to come over as part of the church so that they could still receive help from their homeland if needed. Instead of following the beliefs of the England Church, they instead looked to a new leader. Their main leader that helped establish their new beliefs was John Calvin. Calvin’s idea was that everyone’s life was predestined. God had your life already planned out and there was nothing they could do to change their path. Everyone was also born with a sin that they could not get rid of. This sin that would stain their life was the sin of Adam. Although Calvin played a big role in their lives, so did the Bible. The Bible is what they built their lives around each day. By applying God to their everyday lives, they were able to maintain humanity. With all this Puritans also held five core beliefs. The first one was total depravity which was that Adam’s sin made all human kind prone to evil. The second was limited attachment. This meant Jesus’ sacrifice earned God’s forgiveness but only for a select few. The next one was irresistible grace which said that salvation could only be granted by God. A person could not earn it. The fourth belief was preservation of the saints. Only a select few will remain in state of Grace. The last was predestination. This meant that their life was already set to either go to heaven or hell.


Puritans everyday life was simple. They tried to make everything in their life as in complex as possible. Their writing, literature, food, agriculture, furniture, etc was as easy and simple as they could make it. Even the churches for example were very plain. Puritans did not put any stain glass windows, designs, art, and so on in them in them for fear people would loose focus on the real reason for being in church, which was to learn and listen to the sermons. Although they expressed simplistic life styles, they still held celebrations, feasts, games, etc to dedicate to special occasions.

Character Analysis!!!

Hester Prynne is one of the first main characters the reader is introduced to. She is a seamstress who to the Puritan community, committed a crime. She is now forced to wear a scarlet "A" on her chest as her punishment for committing adultery with the local minister Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester is a strong female character. She shows independence and compassion and is a freethinker. Even when her husband, Rodger Chillingworth, comes to cause trouble, Hester continues on to be strong. When Hester committed adultery with Dimmesdale, the whole community looked down upon her for her actions and for keeping her partner’s name a secret. They made her an outcast to society by shunning her to the forest. Instead of being bitter, Hester shows compassion by reaching out to the poor and hungry. She also shows compassion and love to her daughter Pearl. Hester does what she has to to ake sure she can keep Pearl. She fights for her and lives for her.

Rodger Chillingworth is a physician who is married to Hester Prynne. Chillingworth was an awful husband who loved his work more then his wife. He often ignored her in their marriage, and didn’t love her they way he did his work. Chillingworth came across to the reader as a cold person with no heart. The way Hawthorne describes his distorted body, and the name Hawthorne chose to give him gives the reader a hint that he is an evil man. When he arrives in New England, where he had left his ife alone and by herself, he finds out about Hester’s crime. Since Hester refuses to Reveal the father’s name of her baby, Chiliingworth makes it his job to figure it out for himself and then make him suffer. Soon this job that he took up turned into a nasty obsession which takes over his life. After Dimmesdale dies revealing his dirty secret, Chillingworth has nothing to live for. Soon after Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth dies.

Arthur Dimmesdale is the local minister in the Puritan community. He is the father of Pearl and secret lover to Hester. He decides he doesn’t want to tell the community of his secret, so instead he lets it build up inside of him. Since Hester wears a letter on the outside, Dimmesdale wears one on the inside by his heart. He was constantly seen in the book covering it up on the outside with his hands as if it will shine through his clothes and be revealed to everyone. His guilty conscience built up so much turmoil inside of himself that it eventually made Dimmesdale sick. Although his kept secret caused him to be ill mentally and physically, he was an overall better minister to his followers in the church. The people in the community learned from and enjoyed each of Dimmesdale’s sermons. At the end, Dimmesdale makes his best and last sermon. After that he stands up with Pearl and Hester to announce his secret to everyone in the market place. Immediately after the community heard, Dimmesdale falls to the ground. He makes his final words to Pearl and Hester then dies in Hester’s arms.

The last but certainly not least is Pearl. She is the result of the adultery between Hester Prynne and local minister Arthur Dimmesdale. Pearl is not a normal child. Even though she comes across as sweet and innocent, she also has an elfish/impish side. Many people in the book proclaimed she had some witchcraft in her. Although she is very young in the book, she is very alert and understands what is happening around her. She understands who Dimmesdale is, that her mother is an outcast, who Chillingworth is, etc. She is just an innocent child who some how holds power and knowledge to preform supernatural events (such as the meteor). At the end of the book, when Dimmesdale is dying, Pearl cries. It says that right then Pearl lost that elfish/impish side to her. That she was freed of her witchcraft and would be able to grow to be a real women.

Synopsis of 6th and Last Section of Reading: Chapter 22-24!!!

Chapter 22-24
Chapter 22: The Procession
The majestic procession passes through the marketplace. A company of armored soldiers is followed by a group of the town fathers, whose stolid and dour characters are prominently displayed. Hester is disheartened to see the richness and power of Puritan tradition displayed with such pomp. She and other onlookers notice that Dimmesdale, who follows the town leaders, looks healthier and more energetic than he has in some time. Although only a few days have passed since he kissed her forehead next to the forest brook, Pearl barely recognizes the minister. She tells Hester that she is tempted to approach the man and bestow a kiss of her own, and Hester scolds her. Dimmesdale’s apparent vigor saddens Hester because it makes him seem remote. She begins to question the wisdom of their plans. Mistress Hibbins, very elaborately dressed, comes to talk to Hester about Dimmesdale. Saying that she knows those who serve the Black Man, Mistress Hibbins refers to what she calls the minister’s “mark” and declares that it will soon, like Hester’s, be plain to all. Suggesting that the Devil is Pearl’s real father, Mistress Hibbins invites the child to go on a witch’s ride with her at some point in the future. The narrator interrupts his narration of the celebration to note that Mistress Hibbins will soon be executed as a witch.
After the old woman leaves, Hester takes her place at the foot of the scaffold to listen to Dimmesdale’s sermon, which has commenced inside the meetinghouse. Pearl, who has been wandering around the marketplace, returns to give her mother a message from the ship’s master—Chillingworth says he will make the arrangements for bringing Dimmesdale on board, so Hester should attend only to herself and her child. While Hester worries about this new development, she suddenly realizes that everyone around her—both those who are familiar with her scarlet letter and those who are not—is staring at her.
Chapter 23: The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter
Dimmesdale finishes his Election Day sermon, which focuses on the relationship between God and the communities of mankind, “with a special reference to the New England which they [are] here planting in the wilderness.” Dimmesdale has proclaimed that God will choose the people of New England, and the crowd is understandably moved by the sermon. As they file out of the meeting hall, the people murmur to each other that the sermon was the minister’s best, most inspired, and most truthful ever. As they move toward the town hall for the evening feast, Dimmesdale sees Hester and hesitates. Turning toward the scaffold, he calls to Hester and Pearl to join him. Deaf to Chillingworth’s attempt to stop him, Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold with Hester and Pearl. He declares that God has led him there. The crowd stares. Dimmesdale leans on Hester for support and begins his confession, calling himself “the one sinner of the world.” After he concludes, he stands upright without Hester’s help and tells everyone to see that he, like Hester, has a red stigma. Tearing away his ministerial garments from his breast, Dimmesdale reveals what we take to be some sort of mark—the narrator demurs, saying that it would be “irreverent to describe [the] revelation”—and then sinks onto the scaffold. The crowd recoils in shock, and Chillingworth cries out, “Thou hast escaped me!” Pearl finally bestows on Dimmesdale the kiss she has withheld from him. The minister and Hester then exchange words. She asks him whether they will spend their afterlives together, and he responds that God will decide whether they will receive any further punishment for breaking His sacred law. The minister bids her farewell and dies.
Chapter 24: Conclusion
The book’s narrator discusses the events that followed Dimmesdale’s death and reports on the fates of the other major characters. Apparently, those who witnessed the minister’s death cannot agree upon what exactly it was that they saw. Most say they saw on his chest a scarlet letter exactly like Hester’s. To their minds, it resulted from Chillingworth’s poisonous magic, from the minister’s self-torture, or from his inner remorse. Others say they saw nothing on his chest and that Dimmesdale’s “revelation” was simply that any man, however holy or powerful, can be as guilty of sin as Hester. It is the narrator’s opinion that this latter group is composed of Dimmesdale’s friends, who are anxious to protect his reputation.Left with no object for his malice, Chillingworth wastes away and dies within a year of the minister’s passing, leaving a sizable inheritance to Pearl. Then, shortly after Chillingworth’s death, Hester and Pearl disappear. In their absence, the story of the scarlet letter grows into a legend. The story proves so compelling that the town preserves the scaffold and Hester’s cottage as material testaments to it. Many years later, Hester suddenly returns alone to live in the cottage and resumes her charity work. By the time of her death, the “A,” which she still wears, has lost any stigma it may have had. Hester is buried in the King’s Chapel graveyard, which is the burial ground for Puritan patriarchs. Her grave is next to Dimmesdale’s, but far enough away to suggest “the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle, even in death.” They do, however, share a headstone. It bears a symbol that the narrator feels appropriately sums up the whole of the narrative: a scarlet letter “A” on a black background.

Synopsis of 5th Section of Reading: Chapters 19-21!!!

Chapters 19-21
Chapter 19: The Child at the Brook-Side
Hester calls to Pearl to join her and Dimmesdale. From the other side of the brook, Pearl eyes her parents with suspicion. She refuses to come to her mother, pointing at the empty place on Hester’s chest where the scarlet letter used to be. Hester has to pin the letter back on and effect a transformation back into her old, sad self before Pearl will cross the creek. In her mother’s arms, Pearl kisses Hester and, seemingly out of spite, also kisses the scarlet letter. Hester tries to encourage Pearl to embrace Dimmesdale as well, although she does not tell her that the minister is her father. Pearl, aware that the adults seem to have made some sort of arrangement, asks, “Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?” Because Dimmesdale will not, Pearl rebuffs his subsequent kiss on the forehead. She runs to the brook and attempts to wash it off.
Chapter 20: The Minister in a Maze
As the minister returns to town, he can hardly believe the change in his fortunes. He and Hester have decided to go to Europe, since it offers more anonymity and a better environment for Dimmesdale’s fragile health. Through her charity work, Hester has become acquainted with the crew of a ship that is to depart for England in four days, and the couple plans to secure passage on this vessel. Tempted to announce to all he sees, “I am not the man for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the forest,” Dimmesdale now finds things that were once familiar, including himself, to seem strange.
As he passes one of the church elders on his way through town, the minister can barely control his urge to utter blasphemous statements. He then encounters an elderly woman who is looking for a small tidbit of spiritual comfort. To her he nearly blurts out a devastating “unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul,” but something stops him, and the widow totters away satisfied. He next ignores a young woman whom he has recently converted to the church because he fears that his strange state of mind will lead him to plant some corrupting germ in her innocent heart. Passing one of the sailors from the ship on which he plans to escape, Dimmesdale has the impulse to engage with him in a round of oaths; this comes only shortly after an encounter with a group of children, whom the minister nearly teaches some “wicked words.” Finally, Dimmesdale runs into Mistress Hibbins, who chuckles at him and offers herself as an escort the next time he visits the forest. This interchange disturbs Dimmesdale and suggests to him that he may have made a bargain with Mistress Hibbins’s master, the Devil.
When he reaches his house, Dimmesdale tells Chillingworth that he has no more need of the physician’s drugs. Chillingworth becomes wary but is afraid to ask Dimmesdale outright if the minister knows his real identity. Dimmesdale has already started to write the sermon he is expected to deliver in three days for Election Day (a religious as well as civil holiday that marks the opening of the year’s legislative session). In light of his new view of humanity, he now throws his former manuscript in the fire and writes a newer and better sermon.
Chapter 21: The New England HolidayEchoing the novel’s beginning, the narrator describes another public gathering in the marketplace. But this time the purpose is to celebrate the installation of a new governor, not to punish Hester Prynne. The celebration is relatively sober, but the townspeople’s “Elizabethan” love of splendor lends an air of pageantry to the goings-on. As they wait in the marketplace among an assorted group of townsfolk, Native Americans, and sailors from the ship that is to take Hester and Dimmesdale to Europe, Pearl asks Hester whether the strange minister who does not want to acknowledge them in public will hold out his hands to her as he did at the brook. Lost in her thoughts and largely ignored by the crowd, Hester is imagining herself defiantly escaping from her long years of dreariness and isolation. Her sense of anticipation is shattered, however, when one of the sailors casually reveals that Chillingworth will be joining them on their passage because the ship needs a doctor and Chillingworth has told the captain that he is a member of Hester’s party. Hester looks up to see Chillingworth standing across the marketplace, smirking at her.

Synopsis of 4th Section of Reading: Chapters 15-18!!!

Chapters 15-18
Chapter 15: Hester and Pearl
As Chillingworth walks away, Hester goes to find Pearl. She realizes that, although it is a sin to do so, she hates her husband. If she once thought she was happy with him, it was only self-delusion. Pearl has been playing in the tide pools down on the beach. Pretending to be a mermaid, she puts eelgrass on her chest in the shape of an “A,” one that is “freshly green, instead of scarlet.” Pearl hopes that her mother will ask her about the letter, and Hester does inquire whether Pearl understands the meaning of the symbol on her mother’s chest. They proceed to discuss the meaning of the scarlet letter. Pearl connects the letter to Dimmesdale’s frequent habit of clutching his hand over his heart, and Hester is unnerved by her daughter’s perceptiveness. She realizes the child is too young to know the truth and decides not to explain the significance of the letter to her. Pearl is persistent, though, and for the next several days she harangues her mother about the letter and about the minister’s habit of reaching for his heart.
Chapter 16: A Forest WalkIntent upon telling Dimmesdale the truth about Chillingworth’s identity, Hester waits for the minister in the forest, because she has heard that he will be passing through on the way back from visiting a Native American settlement. Pearl accompanies her mother and romps in the sunshine along the way. Curiously, the sunshine seems to shun Hester. As they wait for Dimmesdale by a brook, Pearl asks Hester to tell her about the “Black Man” and his connection to the scarlet letter. She has overheard an old woman discussing the midnight excursions of Mistress Hibbins and others, and the woman mentioned that Hester’s scarlet letter is the mark of the “Black Man.” When Pearl sees Dimmesdale’s figure emerging from the wood, she asks whether the approaching person is the “Black Man.” Hester, wanting privacy, tries to hurry Pearl off into the woods to play, but Pearl, both scared of and curious about the “Black Man,” wants to stay. Exasperated, Hester exclaims, “It is no Black Man! . . . It is the minister!” Pearl scurries off, but not before wondering aloud whether the minister clutches his heart because the “Black Man” has left a mark there too.Chapter 17: The Pastor and His Parishioner
In the forest, Hester and Dimmesdale are finally able to escape both the public eye and Chillingworth. They join hands and sit in a secluded spot near a brook. Hester tells Dimmesdale that Chillingworth is her husband. This news causes a “dark transfiguration” in Dimmesdale, and he begins to condemn Hester, blaming her for his suffering. Hester, unable to bear his harsh words, pulls him to her chest and buries his face in the scarlet letter as she begs his pardon. Dimmesdale eventually forgives her, realizing that Chillingworth is a worse sinner than either of them. The minister now worries that Chillingworth, who knows of Hester’s intention to reveal his secret, will expose them publicly. Hester tells the minister not to worry. She insists, though, that Dimmesdale free himself from the old man’s power. The former lovers plot to steal away on a ship to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family.
Chapter 18: A Flood of SunshineThe decision to move to Europe energizes both Dimmesdale and Hester. Dimmesdale declares that he can feel joy once again, and Hester throws the scarlet letter from her chest. Having cast off her “stigma,” Hester regains some of her former, passionate beauty, and she lets down her hair and smiles. Sunlight, which as Pearl has pointed out stays away from her mother as though it fears her scarlet letter, suddenly brightens the forest. Hester speaks to Dimmesdale about Pearl and is ecstatic that father and daughter will be able to know one another. She calls their daughter, who has been playing among the forest creatures, to join them. Pearl approaches warily.

Synopsis of 3rd Section of Reading: Chapters 11-14!!!

Chapters 11-14
Chapter 11: The Interior of a Heart
Chillingworth continues to play mind games with Dimmesdale, making his revenge as terrible as possible. The minister often regards his doctor with distrust and even loathing, but because he can assign no rational basis to his feelings, he dismisses them and continues to suffer. Dimmesdale’s suffering, however, does inspire him to deliver some of his most powerful sermons, which focus on the topic of sin. His struggles allow him to empathize with human weakness. Although the reverend deeply yearns to confess the truth of his sin to his parishioners, he cannot bring himself to do so. As a result, his self-probing keeps him up at night, and he even sees visions.
In one vision, he sees Hester and “little Pearl in her scarlet garb.” Hester points “her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on her [mother's bosom, and then at the clergyman’s own breast.” The minister understands that he is delusional, but his psychological tumult leads him to assign great meaning to his delusions. Even the Bible offers him little support. Unable to unburden himself of the guilt deriving from his sin, he begins to believe that “the whole universe is false, . . . it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.” Dimmesdale begins to torture himself physically: he scourges himself with a whip, he fasts, and he holds extended vigils, during which he stays awake throughout the night meditating upon his sin. During one of these vigils, Dimmesdale seizes on an idea for what he believes may be a remedy to his pain. He decides to hold a vigil on the scaffold where, years before, Hester suffered for her sin.
Chapter 12: The Minister’s Vigil
Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold. The pain in his breast causes him to scream aloud, and he worries that everyone in the town will wake up and come to look at him. Fortunately for Dimmesdale, the few townspeople who heard the cry took it for a witch’s voice. As Dimmesdale stands upon the scaffold, his mind turns to absurd thoughts. He almost laughs when he sees Reverend Wilson, and in his delirium he thinks that he calls out to the older minister. But Wilson, coming from the deathbed of Governor Winthrop passes without noticing the penitent. Having come so close to being sighted, Dimmesdale begins to fantasize about what would happen if everyone in town were to witness their holy minister standing in the place of public shame.
Dimmesdale laughs aloud and is answered by a laugh from Pearl, whose presence he had not noticed. Hester and Pearl had also been at Winthrop’s deathbed because the talented seamstress had been asked to make the governor’s burial robe. Dimmesdale invites them to join him on the scaffold, which they do. The three hold hands. The minister feels energized and warmed by their presence. Pearl innocently asks, “Wilt thou stand here with Mother and me, tomorrow noontide?” but the minister replies, “Not now, child, but at another time.” When she presses him to name that time, he answers, “At the great judgment day.”
Suddenly, a meteor brightens the dark sky, momentarily illuminating their surroundings. When the minister looks up, he sees an “A” in the sky, marked out in dull red light. At the same time, Pearl points to a figure that stands in the distance and watches them. It is Chillingworth. Dimmesdale asks Hester who Chillingworth really is, because the man occasions in him what he calls “a nameless horror.” But Hester, sworn to secrecy, cannot reveal her husband’s identity. Pearl says that she knows, but when she speaks into the minister’s ear, she pronounces mere childish gibberish. Dimmesdale asks if she intends to mock him, and she replies that she is punishing him for his refusal to stand in public with her and her mother.
Chillingworth approaches and coaxes Dimmesdale down, saying that the minister must have sleepwalked his way up onto the scaffold. When Dimmesdale asks how Chillingworth knew where to find him, Chillingworth says that he, too, was making his way home from Winthrop’s deathbed.
Dimmesdale and Chillingworth return home. The following day, the minister preaches his most powerful sermon to date. After the sermon, the church sexton hands Dimmesdale a black glove that was found on the scaffold. The sexton recognized it as the minister’s, but concluded only that Satan must have been up to some mischief. The sexton then reveals another startling piece of information: he says that there has been report of a meteor falling last night in the shape of a letter “A.” The townspeople have interpreted it as having nothing to do with either Hester or Dimmesdale. Rather, they believe it to stand for “angel” and take it as a sign that Governor Winthrop has ascended to heaven.
Chapter 13: Another View of Hester
Seven years have passed since Pearl’s birth. Hester has become more active in society. She brings food to the doors of the poor, she nurses the sick, and she is a source of aid in times of trouble. She is still frequently made an object of scorn, but more people are beginning to interpret the “A” on her chest as meaning “Able” rather than “Adulterer.” Hester herself has also changed. She is no longer a tender and passionate woman; rather, burned by the “red-hot brand” of the letter, she has become “a bare and harsh outline” of her former self. She has become more speculative, thinking about how something is “amiss” in Pearl, about what it means to be a woman in her society, and about the harm she may be causing Dimmesdale by keeping Chillingworth’s identity secret.
Chapter 14: Hester and the Physician
Hester resolves to ask Chillingworth to stop tormenting the minister. One day she and Pearl encounter him near the beach, gathering plants for his medicines. When Hester approaches him, he tells her with a smirk that he has heard “good tidings” of her, and that in fact the town fathers have recently considered allowing her to remove the scarlet letter. Hester rebuffs Chillingworth’s insincere friendliness, telling him that human authority cannot remove the letter. Divine providence, she says, will make it fall from her chest when it is time for it to do so. She then informs Chillingworth that she feels it is time to tell the minister the truth about Chillingworth’s identity. From their conversation, it is clear that Chillingworth now knows with certainty that Dimmesdale was Hester’s lover and that Hester is aware of his knowledge.A change comes over Chillingworth’s face, and the narrator notes that the old doctor has transformed himself into the very embodiment of evil. In a spasm of self-awareness, Chillingworth realizes how gnarled and mentally deformed he has become. He recalls the old days, when he was a benevolent scholar. He has now changed from a human being into a vengeful fiend, a mortal man who has lost his “human heart.” Saying that she bears the blame for Chillingworth’s tragic transformation, Hester begs him to relent in his revenge and become a human being again. The two engage in an argument over who is responsible for the current state of affairs. Chillingworth insists that his revenge and Hester’s silence are “[their] fate.” “Let the black flower blossom as it may!” he exclaims to her. “Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man.”

Pictures!!

* The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne
* A Scarlet Letter
* Gallows
* Scaffold
* Garb
* Rosebush

Vocabulary!

Section One: Chapters 1-5
1. Throng: a great number of persons crowded together.
2. Edifice: a large, usually impressive building.
3. Fibre: basic toughness
4. Antinomian: one who rejects a socially established morality.
5. Plebeian: one of the common people.

Section Two: Chapters 6-10
6. Caprice: a sudden, impulsive change: whim.
7. Folio: a book of the largest size.
8. Adduced: to bring forward as in argument or as evidence.
9. Incantations: a use of spells or verbal charms spoken or sung as a part of a ritual of magic.
10. Palliate: to cover by excuses or apologies.

Section Three: Chapters 11-14
11. Malice: desire to see another suffer.
12. Expiation: to atone for; to make amends for.
13. Acquiescing: to accept or comply tacitly or passively.
14. Usurp: to seize and hold (a position,power, etc.) by force or without legal right.
15. Impalpable: incapable of being felt by touch.

Section Four: Chapters 15-18
16. Sedulous: diligent in application or pursuit.
17. Loquacity: exceedingly talkative.
18. Spectre: something that haunts or perturbs the mind; specter.
19. Colloquy: a conversation especially formal one.
20. Citadel: a stronghold.

Section Five: Chapters 19-21
21. Gesticulating: making gestures especially when speaking.
22. Obeisance: a bodily gesture, as a bow, expressing respect.
23. Scruple: an ethical consideration or principle that inhabits action.
24. Effervesce: to show liveliness or exhilaration.
25. Potentate: one who wields controlling power.

Section Six: Chapters 22-24
26. Unbenignantly: acting in a way that is not favorable or beneficial.
27. Swarthy: being of a dark color, complexion, or cast
28. Smite: to attack or afflict suddenly and injuriously.
29. Wrought: deeply stirred: excited.
30. Gules: the heraldic color red.

Syonpsis of section 2, Chapters 6-10

Chapter 6 is all about Pearl. Pearl is a very mischevious child whom the author often describes as "elfish" or "impish". She seems to know a lot more then she should at a young age. One very intersting thing about her is the way she is fascinated by the scarlet letter. She always touches it, and throws things at it. She is not accepted by the other children in the town.
In Chapter 7 Hester takes Pearl to the house of Governer Bellingham because she has to deliver something she has made for him. In his house there is a suit of armor, which distorts the image of Hester and makes the scarlet letter look huge. Pearl sees a rosebush outside the window and screams.
In Chapter 8 a group of men come into the room with Hester and Pearl. They ask why she was even allowed to keep Pearl, and then contemplate taking her away after Pearl will not answer them. Dimmesdale convinces them not to though, and Pearl goes and holds Dimmesdale's hand. Chillingworth is one of the men there and he tries to pry into the case of who the father actually is.
In Chapter 9 we find out that Dimmesdale, the minister, is sick. He is so sick in fact that a doctor, Chillingworth, has to stay with him at all times. Nobody knows Chillingworth's true identity. This is the chapter were we begin to have a pretty good idea that Dimmesdale is in fact the father of Pearl.
In Chapter 10 Dimmesdale and Chillingworth are talking one day when Pearl and Hester walk past. Pearl is hooking burs onto Hester's A, and then throws one at Dimmesdale. Chillingworth asks Dimmesdale about hidden sin, and we can see that Chillingworth is into Dimmesdale. Then one night Chillingworth goes into Dimmesdale's room and rips off his shirt. He finds Dimmesdale's equivalent of a scarlet letter.

Synopsis of first section, Chapters 1-5

In Chapter One not a whole lot happens in terms of action. The chapter is sets up the scene for the rest of the book. It describes the jail as very dark and dreary, but then talks about a rosebush next to the prison that is the one good thing among a bunch of bad.
In Chapter Two a young, beautiful woman, Hester Prynne emerges from the prison onto the scaffolding. She has a young child in her arms, but the most striking thing about her is the letter "A" that is embriodered onto her dress. After awhile we find that the letter stands for Adultress, and that the child, Pearl, was had out of wedlock. The entire town is watching Hester, and publicly shaming her.
In Chapter Three Hester sees a white man dressed as an indian in the crowd. She recognizes this man as her husband, the man she cheated on. Then Hester is asked in front of everybody who is the father of the baby. She refuses to answer though.
In Chapter Four Hester is back in the jail. In the jail she meets up with her husband who she cheated on. His name is Chillingworth. He asks Hester to tell him who the father of the baby is, but she refuses again. Chillingworth tells her that she cannot tell anybody in the town his true identity, and that he plans to find out who the real father is and get revenge on him.
In Chapter Five Hester is released from prison. She is made to live in seclusion with just her daughter Pearl. Everybody in the town looks down upon her because she has to wear the scarlet letter at all times. She is an outcast from society. She still has her job though, and she does it well. She sews things, but she is now no longer allowed to sew wedding dresses.

Symbolism!!!

The Rosebush!- goodness and hope, martyr due to it's connection to Anne Hutchison
Light/Dark!- light is truth, darkness is sin and guilt
Pearl!- symbol of adulterous love between Dimmesdale and Hester
Mirrors!- reflection of self-image, how you are reviewed as by society, source of self discovery, looking for imperfections
Scarlet Letter!- guilt of Hester's adultery

Biography of the Author, Nathaniel Hawthorne!!!

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His family had been prominent in the area since colonial times. A rich lore of local history and family provided much of the material for Hawthorne's works. When Nathaniel was four, his father died on a voyage, but relatives recognized his literary talent and financed his education at Bowdoin College.
Hawthorne was extremely concerned with conventionality and publsihed his first short stories . Hawthorne later formally withdrew most of this early work, discounting it as the work of inexperienced youth. Hawthorne's fiancee Sophia Peabody drew him into the transcendentalist movement and in 1841 Hawthorne invested $1500 in the Brook Farm Utopian Community. His later works show some Transcendentalist influence, including a belief in individual choice and consequence, and an emphasis on symbolism.

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