"If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than heater prynne's."
- Pearl cannot be like the other Puritan children who represent the ideals of a religion that frowns upon sin. She cannot, because she was born of sin, from adulterers. This is showing again Puritan ideals by using isolation.
"So much strength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to pearls beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth."
- Pearl is within the forest and so vivid and noticeable inside that she is a flame, who is clearly happy, regardless of mistakes made by others(Her mother and the minister).
#15
"She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence, the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment, whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation.
-Pearl is viewed as an infestation of the Puritans born of sin and not respected. She, however has done nothing wrong but is a blooming rose bud that will someday be something great.
(#16)
As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the Puritans looked up from their play, or what passed for play with those sombre little urchins, and spake gravely to one another.
The children, who are playing, see Hester and Pearl and view them as dark, dull, and grey, because of their exclusion from society. Pearl is not able to blend in with the others because she is born of sin, but the other children who are not, are vivid and colorful unlike Pearl.
(#17)
"No, my little Pearl!" said her mother. "Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give to thee!"
-Hester has no "sunshine", as she puts it, or anything that can be viewed positively because she is a sinner, and only surrounded by her mistakes. If Pearl wants to find happiness, she cannot find it from her mother, but must search for it and find it herself.
(#18)
"Come along, Pearl!" said she, drawing her away. "Come and look into this fair garden. It may be, we shall see flowers there; more beautiful ones than we find in the woods.
Hawthorne here is alluding to the bible, and showing that in the bible the beauty replicated is twice as amazing as the forest they are in now. It is an allusion to Eden and the creation of life, which is one of the greatest feats of nature where Hester and Pearl can escape to.
"I am mothers child, answered the scarlet vision, and my name is Pearl!"
- Pearl believes that she will be exactly like her mother, unknowing of the adulterer she is. She wants to , but does not actually know that her mother is a sinner, and that that is why she cannot play among or be like the other children.
#20
"I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!" answered Hester Prynne, laying her finger on the red token.
"Woman, it is thy badge of shame!" replied the stern magistrate. It is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would transfer thy chid to other hands.
- Hester, believing that she can show her child to learn from her sins, proudly tells of it. However, the despondent quickly reminds her that it is not something to be proud of, and that she wears it to advertise her mistakes.
#21
"Unkown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him"
-Chillingworth is furthering his connection from all of mankind and society apart, he is becoming more and more evil and less of a man. He is now described as a materialized darkness only attempting to inflict pain; he is the devil.
#22
"His form grew emancipated; his voice, though still rich and sweet had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay and it he was often observed on any slight alarm or other sudden accident to put his hand over his heart with first of flushing the paleness indicative of pain"
- Chillingworth can still maintain a positive image regardless of how evil he actually is. He feels no pain of his committed actions and will do anything he can to make sure that Hester is aware of her mistake.
"The walls were hung round with tapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and Bathsheba, and Nathan the Prophet, in colors still ungraded, but which made the fair woman of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer."
- The atmosphere of the room causes the woman to seem more religious-like and gives off the impression that she is helping Pearl by telling her religious things.
Chapter 10
#24
"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."
-The physician is searching for something inside the heart, which symbolizes his own search for his greater good. He, unaware of how something needs to be found, is still intent on finding it inside himself.
#25
"Watching the process by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency."
-Watching weeds grow is like watching drugs perform their tasks. They continuously do a specific task, grow, until they are completely grown.
Chapter 11
# 26
"In their eyes, the very grounds on which he trod was sanctified"
- The others view the minister as the most holy man they know, when in truth he is a greater sinner than the entire Puritan society, not because of his adultry, but because he refuses to publicize it in the same way that Hester has.
Chapter 12
#27
"The same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The minister went up the steps. "
- The weather stain scaffold that Hester once stood on is no darkened by nature. It symbolizes that things that have lasted since then are now darkened and changing. Hester's sin has turned her into a saint-like woman desperate to assist the community, and shaded over her sin the same way the weather has darkened that scaffold.
#28
"The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street, with the distinctness of midday, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light."
- The vault, now illuminated, is light that is now spreading on something once negative. It reveals the things that people want to see as well as the terrible places in the city that are frowned upon.
#29
"They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another."
- The sunshine is the revealer of secrets and considered a positive thing in nature, unlike darkness.
Chapter 13
#30
"Links that united her to the rest of human kind- links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material-had all been broken.
- Hester's connection to nature is now non-existent, which shows that all of the life she had once enjoyed, is dying in front of her very eyes.
31
"Such helpfulness was found in her, so much power to do, and power to sympathize, that many people refused to interpret the scarlet a by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength."
- The "A", that Hester once wore as a declaration of her sin is now being viewed as something positive by the society. Meaning that she is labelled not by her past mistakes, but by the things she does now to make up for it. It is an appeal to forgiveness that Hawthorne expresses and a way of showing that people all make mistakes, but only few have the bravery to admit them and repent in Puritan society.
#32
"It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When Sunshine came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded across the threshold."
- Hester is associated with darkness, not light, because she has still made gloomy mistakes that follow her around. But was once present in the sunshine, the light, that represents the positivity of things.
#33
"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!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years.
-Hester is like a gift to the Puritans and such an asset to them, but the worst of human nature, gossip, would be brought out once she had left. Although the discussion of her affair was clearly negative, the people were still human, just as her, but could not resist conversing of the scandal.
Chapter 14
#34
"Peace, Hester Peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sterness. "It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of.. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer."
-The old man's old faith, unsaid, represents why things are negative in the world, but because he does not tell of it, leaves open ideas as to why he shares it. He implies that the Puritan religion is the only holy one, and any others bring darkness.
Chapter 15
#35
"As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letter, the letter A, but freshly green, instead of scarlet!"
- Pearl wants to be just like her mother, but is unaware of the sins she has made, or why she wears the A. This shows Pearl's connection to her, and shows that she is still looked up to no matter what the a means. Her sins are worthless in comparison with her repent and she has made it clear to society that this is so.
Chapter 16
#36
"Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing a good way off."
-Sunshine is pure and sacred, but Hester, however is not. Absolutely no one is free from sin, and Pearl believes she will grow up to be just like her mother. This makes Hester unweary knowing of the sin she has committed. Pearl, absorbs the sunlight whilst her mother no longer does because of her sin.
#37
"Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?" asked her mother.
"Yes, if thou tellest me all," answered PEarl.
"Once in my life I met the Black Man!" said her mother Black Man= The Minister
"This scarlet letter is his mark!"
-Hester admits that she has indeed been confronted by something, or someone, who greatly resembles the evil that made her commit her sin. There is a greater person who represents the most evil being in existence, and he is the one who bears the scarlet letter upon Hester's chest.
Chapter 17
#38
"Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one, whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. -Dimmesdale
-Hester comfortably worries not about Dimmesdale's uncomfortableness pertaining to his secrecy of his own A. She knows that she is the reason for his unhappiness, but because he was so unhappy even before, she does not care what he is or is not happy about.
#39
"May God forgive us both! We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!"
- Guilty of sin, Dimmesdale and Hester have not committed sin as terrible as Chillingworth, which was toying with a human heart. He does this but it one of the worst possible things that a Puritan can do.
Chapter 18
#40
But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was all together foreign to the clergyman.
-
#41
All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees.
-The nature, that was once enshrowded by darkness, is now overcome with gleaming sunlight that represents the return of happiness to what many people thought was once evil.
Chapter 20
#42
Not to speak of the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his entire development would secure him a home only in the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the state, the more delicately adapted to it the man.
- Hawthorne defines how the clergyman's health is not able to live in the forest, because his culture believes that it is evil. He can only live where there are other people and higher powers, as Puritan life is meant to be. This is the real problem, that he cannot adapt unless he has what he has been taught to live with.
#43
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.
-No one can appeal to society and to themselves when they disagree with either side of the appeal. They must pick a side and be true to it, or it makes no sense to him what he actually wants.
Chapter 21
#44
"It would have been impossible to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed its existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy at once so gorgeous and so delicate"
-The dress that Hester chose to dress her daughter in symbolizes the grayness of life lived that can be transformed into something vibrant and beautiful the same way that Pearl was.
#45
"But, at that instant, she beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself, standing in the remotest corner of the market-place, and smiling on her; a smile which - across the wide and bustling square, and through all the talk and laugher, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of the crowd - conveyed secret and fearful meaning."
- Chilingworth now completely distraught and evil, is still determined to do the best he can to make Hester's life hell. He chooses to do so because he, is the most evil character Hawthorne uses and uses him to resemble the devil.
Chapter 22 205
#46"But she was brought back to her former mood nu the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armour of the military company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the procession."
- The sunshine is the pleasantness once again in Hawthorne's writing. It is showing that the soldiers are something to welcome and not be afraid of, which is also why Pearl is happy that they are arriving.
#47
"Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. "We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest"
- The forest and city are two extremely different places, and the town is not as comfortable as a place for them to discuss things as the forest it.
Chapter 23
#48
"Wave back that woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish dishonor! I can yet save you! Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession!"
- Chillingworth does not want Hester to admit her sins with the minister to the public because he will no longer be able to torture them they way he has. This takes away all the evil that Chillingworth could potentially be and makes him nothing without leverage against her. He too is guilty of sin and is partially why he does not want her on the scaffold once again.
#49
"With a convulsive motion he tore away the ministerial ban from before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to describe the revelation. For an instant the gaze of the horror stricken multitude was concentrated on the ghastly miracle; while the minister stood with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold!
- After revealing the truth to society, his death is the only thing to follow. It is a way Hawthorne shows that once everything is accomplished, no more can be done, the only thing left is death. Which is what happens to the minister.
#50
- "With God's help, I shall escape thee now!"
The minister tells Chillingworth, who is the devil, that he will be escaping him with the help of God. Chillingworth is no longer able to do anything the same way God stops Satan from committing evil deeds. He is soon to wither away because of his absence of evil he has to present upon Hester and Dimmesdale.
