... around three main scaffold scenes. It was brilliantly designed by the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, so that the first scaffold scene contains the introduction, the second contains the climax, and the third contains the conclusion. The first scene, however, truly captures the essence of the book. The first scaffold scene in The Scarlet Letter is the most important, because it introduces the plot, shows the pressures of a Puritan society and the type of strong-willed character Hester Prynne is. It is very ... difficult to read a book, not knowing any information about it. The first scaffol...

• Word Count: 711
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... self-mutilations. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale has many opportunities to acknowledge his wrongdoing. He could have confessed during the first scaffold scene as Hester stood in front of the townspeople. Dimmesdale preached to her about her sin, although he was her co-sinner. He could have admitted his sin and endured the wrath of the Puritan society as Hester does, but he lacks the courage. When Dimmesdale ... went to the scaffold during the night he had the opportunity to tell Reverend Mr. ... Wilson of his sin, but he neglected to do so. Pearl asked the Reverend to...

• Word Count: 898
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... and Alienation in The Scarlet Letter In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale have committed adultery, an unacceptable sin during the Puritan times. As a result of their sin, a child is born, whom the mother names Pearl. Out of her own free will Hester has to face major punishments. She has to serve many months in prison, stand on the scaffold for three hours under public scrutiny, and attach a scarlet letter, "A" on ... . When Hester is released from prison and put on the scaffold, she was asked to reveal the name of whom she committed the sin w...

• Word Count: 833
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... too chooses to show the truth of where she has come from. She knows that she is the product of her parents" "sin" and does not hide it. She shows this through her scarlet letter, and she insists on it being exposed. To conclude, there are many situations in the Scarlet Letter where truth is shown, exposed and hidden. The Puritan society in which the characters live in do their own part ... to show or hide the truth as well. The characters of Hester, Pearl and ... Dimmesdale are the three main characters that show truth ... ...

• Word Count: 623
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

The Scarlet Letter In the center of a town, a scaffold sits for sinners to undergo public humiliation, but in the end, it serves as a step towards an Emersonian self-reliance. The ideological view of the old Puritan society was replaced by transcendentalism in America. People such as Emerson and Thoreau changed the views of the public, with words and actions. The scaffold similarly served as a link for the characters in the Scarlet Letter to separate their ideals from the ideological society in which they lived ... . Though the role of the scaffold was different, some sort of absolution was al...

• Word Count: 917
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses three scenes on the scaffold to emphasize suffering and torment in Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Throughout the book, the scaffold has been the symbol of puritan society's harsh punishment for sinners. The three scaffold scenes in The Scarlet Letter convey the theme of sin not being tolerated whatsoever in Puritan Society. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is tormented throughout the story and in all three scenes with the scaffold. In the second scaffold scene, Dimmesdale is "overwhelmed with shame, and ... stand[s] where Hester Prynne had stood...

• Word Count: 598
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

... is harmful and should be held with contempt through the character Arthur Dimmesdale, the unholy minister whose guilt of being an adulterer eventually kills him. Hawthorne's story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter "A" on her breast. Hester's husband, a scholar ... they respect him so highly. While a person might think that the shock of the ministers secret life provokes the crowd to consider their castigatory organization. But, sadly...

• Word Count: 1146
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... The Scarlet Letter in 1850, many years after the demise of the New England Puritan society that his novel attacks. The novel follows the struggles of two sinners in the morally strict Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth century. A young woman named Hester Prynne and the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale commit adultery. Hester's sin becomes publicly acknowledged when she has a child; she is forced face humiliation by standing on a scaffold in the center of town and must wear a scarlet letter ... "A" on her chest. At the ... ...

• Word Count: 891
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... lean to accept their guilt and confess. Hester Prynne evolves through out the novel and is able to face situations and trails in her life that challenge the moral foundations of her society. The young Hester Prynne had committed the act of adultery and received her punishment with defiance and haughty pride. Hester first appears in the story emerging from her jail cell with her bastard child, at ... ready to give... None so self-devoted as Hester..."(147) She fed the hungry of the village, was often at the bed side of the sick, and used her talent for sewing to cloth her poor neighbors....

• Word Count: 785
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... sin, when they tell the reader about the prison, the scaffold, and how Hester is being publicly condemned for adultery. These chapters also show the reader that the society is depicting the political reality of Hester's World, the Puritan society. The Puritans intended to create a "Utopian" society, but it can be seen in these chapters that this world already knows sin. The women of the town criticize her for embroidering the scarlet letter, the symbol of her shame, with ... such care and in such a flashy manner. This seems to declare that Hester ... ...

• Word Count: 295
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

... a painful sense of having done something wrong, improper or immodest. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale struggles to overcome sin, guilt, and public shame in Puritan society. Arthur Dimmesdale reveals his guilt and shame towards the end of the novel when Hester and Pearl stand with him on the scaffold while he confesses his sin to the townspeople. To feel shame or guilt, one must have a clean ... to keep his sin a secret. Dimmesdale thinks of his sin as not showing loyalty to God; However, he avoids confessing his sin due to the fear of judgement, and lo...

• Word Count: 939
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

The book "The Scarlet Letter" written by Hawthorne has lot of changes within it. The Scaffold in the beginning of the book is represented as a place for transgressors. But each time it reappears in the story, it changes its meaning. So, it changes three times in the book from a place of retribution for transgressors to a place of unity and finally to a place of introspection. The Scaffold in the beginning of the book is ... represented as a place of shame and retribution for transgressors. Hester happens to be standing on the scaffold for she has committed a crime that could not be forgiven ...

• Word Count: 695
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Importance of the Three Scaffold Scenes In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, there are three very important scenes that all take place at the town scaffold. The scaffold is a place of great shame in the Puritan society in which the story takes place. These three scenes represent how Revrend Dimmesdale changes over the course of the story. At first he denies is sin, then he reluctantly accepts it, and finally in the third scene he conquers his sin ... . Reverend Dimmesdale goes from being a very strong man with a guilty conscience in the first scene to being worn down from his guilt in...

• Word Count: 729
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School