... ancestors. In the course of the story, Nathaniel Hawthorne makes reference to an infamous Italian family of an extended authority. The Borgias family is introduced to the reader through Rappaccini's rival Baglioni. The latter makes a comparison between the antidote meant to heal Beatrice and the poisons of the Borgias. However, the reference to this family has a further meaning than that of showing the potency of the antidote. Hawthorne meant to use The Borgias as a symbol for his disgust of the bad ... the opposite. The final point is that Rappaccini's garden reflects both the Brook Fa...

• Word Count: 9442
• Approx Pages: 38
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison door" (Waggoner 335). Hawthorne constructs the novel around three climactic scenes on the scaffold in front of the prison. In the first, Hester endures her public shaming on it with Pearl in her arms. "The scaffold is a symbol of the open acknowledgment of sin brought on by the strict puritanical code of their society"(www.essaybank.com). Midway through the novel the minister, who has been ... and there they are seen together by Hester's husband, Chillingworth. At the end, the exhausted and death-stricken Dimmesdale totters to confess his sin...

• Word Count: 1915
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School