The rose is a symbol referred to throughout the story. In this first chapter it illustrates the beauty that can come from the penumbra of a prison. Not coincidentally, for the rest of the story, it is linked to Pearl. Waggoner elaborates on this by documenting that the rose in front of the prison is described as covered in delicate gems. Likewise, Pearl is the "red-clad" gem of her mother's bosom. Throughout the story, Pearl's beauty is likened to a rose. She cries for one in the governor's garden "and when asked who made her, she answers she was plucked by her mother off 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 driven almost crazy by his guilt but lacked the resolution to confess it, ascends one midnight for self-torture. Hester joins him, 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 at last to the incredulous and only half- comprehending crowd, and to die in Hester's arms. .
Gomez 3.
On the scaffold, the entire town sees the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom for the first time. The meaning of this letter changes throughout the story. It is placed on Hester by the Puritans to give her shame and to mark her as an "adulterer." She sews it on her bosom but fancifully embroiders it with fine cloths and stitches. Though she always wears it, never does it appear that Hester is embarrassed to wear the mark. It seems that she wears it as a badge of honor. It represents her individuality in a society of structured, conformist living.
